dadant system of beekeeping
TRANSCRIPT
DADANT SYSTEMOF
BEEKEEPINGC. P. DADANT
dl
The Dadant Systemof Beekeeping
Copyright, 1920,
By C. P. Dadant
tJSPP-
Charles Dadant
Dadant System of
Beekeeping
BY
C. P. DADANTEDITOR OF THE AMERICAN REE JOURNAL,REVISER OF "THE HONEY REE," AUTHOROF "FIRST LESSONS IN REEKEEPING," ETC.
*3r
AMERICAN BEE JOURNALHAMILTON, ILLINOIS
1920
Chapter 1
Chapter
Chapter 3.
Chapter 4.
Chapter 5.
Chapter 6.
Chapter 7.
Chapter S.
Chapter 9.
Chapter 10.
Chapter 11.
Chapter 12.
Chapter 13.
Chapter 14.
CONTENTS:
. PageEarly experiments—Natural History. 1
The Queen 5
The worker-bee 6
Size of Hives. 9
The large hive 10
Small hives 14
Safety in wintering 20Frame spacing 21
The supers 23
Side storage 26
Queen excluders 26
Drones and Drone Production. 29
The Dadant Hive 35
A simplified Dadant hive 42
Hive making - 46
Handling Bees. 47
Our Apiaries. 49
Outapiaries 52
Apiary Management. 55
Spring 56The honey crop 57
Increase 57
Queens for increase 58
Swarm Prevention and Supering. 65
Prevention of natural swarming 65
Putting on supers 72
Extracting. 75
Extracting implements 80Robbing...- S5
Varying honey crops 87Requeening 88Queen Introduction 89
Nomadic Beekeeping. 91
Fall Management. 97
Wintering. 99
Cellar wintering 100
Our house cellar 101
Wintering in clamps 102
Wintering out-of-doors 102
Diseases of Bees. 107
Enemies of Bees. 113
l£^
ILLUSTRATIONS
Charles Dadant Frontispiece
Moses Quinby Fig. 1
L. L. Langstroth, inventor of the movable frame hive Fig. 2
C. P. Dadant, sons and son-in-law Fig. 3
Head of Queen Fig. 4
I [ead of worker Fig. 5
Frames of Langstroth and Dadant-Quinby size Fig. 6
Twenty-frame Dadant hive tried by Charles Dadant Fig. 7
Coffin-shaped frames tried by the senior Dadant Fig. 8
Eight-frame Langstroth and Dadant hive side by side Fig. 9
Several stories of eight-frame hives make too tall a pile Fig. 10
Shallow brood-chambers, same depth as supers Fig. 1
1
Ekes or nadirs of by-gone days Fig. 12
The DeLayens long idea hive Fig. 13
A regularly laid and well filled comb of worker brood Fig. 14
Comparison of Langstroth and Dadant Supers Fig. 15
Queen excluders exclude ventilation and free access to supers Fig. 16
Modern excluders are better than the old, but are still in the wayof the bees - -Fig. 17
Comb built without foundation or with only a small starter Fig. 18
The drone trap should not be used except in rare instances Fig. 19
Detailed cross-section of original Dadant hive Fig. 20
Details of underside of Dadant hive Fig. 21
Dadant hive open Fig. 22
The division board of the Dadant hive Fig. 23
The story and a half Modified Dadant hive Fig. 24
Frames of the Modified Dadant hive are the same length as
those of Langstroth hive Fig. 25
The Modified Dadant hive has a 40 per cent larger brood comb area
than the 10-frame Langstroth Fig. 26
The Modified Dadant hive is equipped with metal cover and re-
versible bottom Fig. 27
The body is dovetailed and has 1 1 Hoffman frames Fig. 28
The regular Langstroth body may be used as a super Fig. 29
Home apiary, where we kept bees over 55 years Fig. 30
A Dadant outyard. The Poland apiary Fig. 31
Another Dadant outyard, the Holland apiary Fig. 32
The LeMaire apiary of the Dadant outyard system Fig. 33
The Milliken outyard of the Dadant system Fig. 34
The Koch apiary of the Dadant system Fig. 35
Another Dadant outapiary on the edge of the bluff Fig. 36
ix
x ILLUSTRATIONS
Queen cells hang downward Fig. 37
A small colony is confined to such space as it can cover, by use of thedivision board Fig. 38
Supers set back for ventilation in hot weather Fig. 39
The bee-escape board lends itself to modern honey production Fig. 40
Using mud to close gap between stories by hive tool Fig. 41
Method of lifting supers to put on escape board Fig. 42
First honey-extractor of Hruschka Fig. 43
The first extractor made in the United States Fig. 44
Uncapping at a single stroke of the knife Fig. 45
Robber cloth and pan protect supers from robbers duringextracting..Fig. 46
The original cappingcan is still in usa in the Dadant apiaries Fig. 47
Supers returned to the hives after the last extracting of the year Fig. 48
Super combs which have been in use over fifty years, and are fully
as good as at first Fig. 49
The Mississippi bottoms viewed from the Koch apiary on the bluff -Fig. 50
Chart of the Dadant apiaries in 1880 Fig. 51
Map of the Dadant apiaries in 1919 Fig. 52
Moving bees on auto trucks. Fig. 53
Closing brood-chambers with screens for hauling in hot weather Fig. 54
Hives packed for winter out-of-doors ...Fig. 55
A three-colony winter-case Fig. 56
Gas torch for singeing hives that have contained American foul-
brood Fig. 57
Low, moist, rich bottom land that is good fcr honey production Fig. 58
The Dadant System of
BeekeepingCHAPTER I
Early Experiments.—Natural History
In writing a book, it is customary to begin with a pre-
face, which very few people read. We want the student to read
Moses QuixbyOriginator of the frame which the Dadants adopted.
this as well as the rest of the book, in order to secure an idea of
the "why" of the system that the writer develops in the en-
suing pages.
DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPIXd
1
DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
C. P. DadANT, sons, a\d son-in-law
From left to right— L. G. Saugier, M. G. Dadant, C. P. Dadant, H. C.
Dadant and L. C. Dadant
them pecuniarily independent. Mr. Dadant often said that
those bees always paid, beforehand, in product, for all expenses
put in their management and in numerous improvements.
After experimenting upon divers Old World methods of
beekeeping, he read in a magazine, of the success of MosesQuinby, of New York State, bought his book "The Mysteries
of Beekeeping" and later "The Hive & Honey Bee" of Lang-
stroth, which he was to revise, 20 years later, at the request
of the author. In a very short time he became convinced
that the Langstroth system was ahead of anything yet devised;
that the movable-frame hive principle was the key of successful
beekeeping; because of the perfect control which it gives the
beekeeper over the bees and the combs.
The difference between the Langstroth and the Quinby methods
4 DADAXT SYSTEM OF DEEKEEPIXG
resided only in the dimensions of the hives ana of the frames;
Quinby having adopted the Langstroth invention of movable-
frames, but adapting it to frames and hives of a different ^ize.
This invention consists in hives containing frames of comb with
a bee-space between the ends, tops and bottoms of the frames
and the body of the hive, opening at the top.
The writer, son of Charles Dadant, was initiated in the
main secrets of the bee hive at the age of 14 but did not become
an active apiarist till the age of 18.
He was very timid with bees, being afraid of their stings.
It was not until a very prosperous season for honey production
when, his father being laid up with hay fever, he felt compelled
to look after the bees. Finding the hives full of honey and the
bees working eagerly in empty supers and filling them with
beautiful white combs, his enthusiasm got the better of his
fear of stings and he became a bee lover henceforth.
The senior Dadant was fond of experiments. So he tried
not only the Langstroth and Quinby styles of hives, but a number
of other styles, and in 1868 had a few hives in square frames
12"xl3", which he liked well enough to recommend them in a
little book, "Petit Cours D'Apiculture" published, in the
French language in 1874, for the benefit of his native country.
After trying them for 30 odd years, side by side with largely
increasing numbers of both Quinby and Langstroth hives, wefinally adopted the Quinby size of frames, adding to the numberof frames from the original eight, recommended by Quinby,
to 9 and 10. Why did we find the Quinby frame preferable?
Because it is a little over two inches deeper than the standard
Langstroth frame, contains more surface of comb, and supplies
more honey over the cluster for winter.
Although we do not propose, in this book, to describe at
length the natural history of the honeybee which is given in
more or less detail in both of our published works, "The Hive &Honey Bee" and "First Lessons in Beekeeping," it is necessary
to explain some of the characteristics of the queens, workers
and drones in order to indicate the requirements that bring
about the greatest success.
DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
The Queen
The queen, the mother-bee, is fertilized for life, at the age
of about 6 to 10 days, in normal circumstances. She is then
fitted for a life's production of bees. Her greatest laying comes
at the opening of spring, when it is necessary to rear, for the
honey harvest, a large number of worker-bees. Early writers
assured their readers that a
good queen could lay from 200
to 500 eggs per day, and they
perhaps wondered whether the
reader would believe this as-
sertion. But when the inven-
tion of movable-frame hives
enabled the beekeeper to
study the innermost secrets
of the bee-hive, it was found Fig.4. Head of the Queen (magnified)
that queens of good quality
(and we should have no others) could lay more than 3,000 eggs
per day, for weeks and months together. This was asserted
first by Langstroth and Quinby. Mr. Langstroth stated that
he had seen a queen lay, in an observing hive, at the rate of
six eggs per minute. We witnessed a similar performance
ourselves. It is not necessary that a queen should lay eggs at
that speed in order to prove very prolific, since a ten hour dayof egg-laying would produce 3600 eggs.
Doolittle, one of the bright lights of beekeeping, from 1870
to 1918, asserted that he had had queens that laid as many as
5,000 eggs in 24 hours, for weeks in succession. There is a wayby which any one, who owns bees in movable-frame hives, mayascertain how many eggs are laid by a prolific queen, without
being compelled to watch her performances. It takes 21 days to
carry the newly laid egg, intended for a worker-bee, through the
different stages of metamorphosis, to the perfect insect with
wings which cuts itself out of the sealed cell. So if we count the
number of cells containing brood and eggs, during the height of
the breeding season, if the hive be large enough and the queen
DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
sufficiently prolific, we will ascertain that many queens can and dolay 3,500 and even more eggs per day, for a number of weeks.
To count the number of cells it is only necessary to measure the
number of square inches of brood surface, remembering that
each square inch represents between 27 and 28 workers.
This heavy brood laying lasts only during the spring andearly summer months, of course. In the fall the laying is
reduced and in the winter it ceases.
It is important that we should enable the queen to lay
to the utmost of her capacity for the time when her bees, or the
bees hatching from her eggs, will be able to harvest a crop.
Like a good general, we must marshal our forces for the battle
neither too early, nor too late. With bees, it is more important
than with men, because bees have but a very limited time of
usefulness. In order to illustrate this, it is necessary to say a
few words about the
Worker-Bee
The worker-bee is an undeveloped female. Had the youngfemale larva, when hatching, been fed with milky pap during the
whole time of her existence
as larva, and had she been
placed in a spacious queen-
cell, she would have been a
queen. But only one queen
is needed in a hive. Sothe female larvae, and the
drone larvae as well, are
hatched in small cells and
fed with the milky pap, or
royal jelly, during only the
first three days of life; after
that time, the food is coarser
and composed of pollen, or
bee-bread as it is often called, and honey. The result is an
entirely different being from what it would have been as a
fully developed insect:
Fig. 5. Head of the worker bee
(magnified)
DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 7
1. The worker has no egg sacks or ovaries; at least such
ovaries as she may have are unable to produce eggs in ordinary
circumstances and never more than a few eggs at best.
2. Her head is shaped differently, her jaws more power-
ful, her antennae rise up in the air at the least disturbance,
she has salivary glands which do not exist or are very imperfect
in the queen and the drone, she has wax-producing organs
which exist in neither of the others; on her hind legs are brushes
and baskets to gather and carry pollen, which are entirely
absent in queen or drones.
3. She is of a determined disposition, flying at an intruder
without fear, when irritated, while the queen runs and hides
from view. Her sting is straight instead of being curved like
that of the queen. She goes about in search of honey and pollen,
takes care of the brood and does all the domestic service of the
home.
4. She has great reverence for the queen-mother, while
the queen herself, if any rivals are about, seeks to destroy them.The worker bees hatch from the egg in 21 days, in ordinary
circumstances. They do duty about the inside for a week, before
attempting a flight outside. About the seventh day, in the after-
noon, they take their first flight, coming back home after havingmade the acquaintance of the surroundings, and remaininganother week indoors. It is therefore only after 2 weeks of
insect life, 5 wreeks from the laying of the egg, that the workerbecomes a field bee and begins to harvest honey. This is im-
portant to know, if we wish to get our force of honey harvesters
at the right time.
The worker does not live long in the busy season. Previous
to the introduction of the Italian bee in apiaries of commonbees, it was difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain how long a
worker lives. The introduction of Italian bees has helped solve
this problem in a positive manner.
If you introduce an Italian queen in a colony of commonor black bees, say on the first of May, after having killed its
black queen, there will not be a single black bee left in that hive
8 DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPIXd
on the first of August, 3 months (90 days) later. When you
killed the black queen, there were eggs freshly laid in the cells.
Those eggs have required 21 days to hatch. So in 71 to 72 days
from the hatching of the last eggs, the black bees have disap-
peared, showing an average of 36 days for the life of a worker-bee
in summer. During the fall and winter their life is longer, for
they do not wear themselves out then with hard work, as they
do in summer.
We must compute the time when the marshalling of our
army of bees will be needed, by the crops of the country in which
we live. W7e must rear our bees to work upon the bloom of
either clover, alfalfa, basswood, sage, heather, mesquite, pal-
metto, gallberry, buckwheat, Spanish needle or bidens, etc.,
as the case may be. The strength of the colony must come for
the opening of those crops; for the general who brings his soldiers
too late upon the battlefield will lose the battle.
In other words, to use a most forcible expression, from one
of our best teachers among the bee educators, Mr. Geo. S.
Demuth, we must rear our working force of bees for the honey
crop and not upon the honey-crop. The secret of success is all
there.
However it is very clear that we cannot have a full force
of bees, if the capacity of the brood chamber is inadequate to
supply breeding space for our most prolific queens. The queens
must not be cramped for room to lay, at the time when bees
are most needed.
CHAPTER II.
Size of Hives
The Quinby "hives originally made by Moses Quinby and
first adopted by us contained 8 frames measuring 10^x18
inches inside. The Langstroth hives of standard size contained
Fig. 6. Frames of Langstroth size and of Quinby- Dadant size
10 frames, measuring 8x16^ inches inside. The former hive
had therefore a capacity of 92 square inches of comb over the
latter. We found both too small, for when we placed supers with.
10 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
combs over those hives, in the spring, the queens would go upinto those supers and lay eggs, after they had filled the lower
story. Mr. Dadant senior then tried Quinby hives of different
capicities, up to 20 frames of comb, or with a capacity of 3780,
square inches of comb. These were too large by all means,
Fig. 7. Twenty frame Dadant hive tried by Charles Dadant
and although we used some 40 of them for several years, wecould only produce honey on what was later called "the long
idea,' that is to say we had both brood and surplus honey in
the same apartment. Although the colony usually occupied
one side of the hive with brood, the queen often roamed fromone end of the hive to the other and honey sometimes had to be
extracted from combs containing brood, a very undesirable
arrangement.
To give the reader an idea of the number of hive ex-
periments made by the senior Dadant, we will say that he
tried hives with frames 18x18 inches, looking like regular barns.
DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 11
Fig. 8. Coffin-shaped frames tried by the senior Dadant to obtain thenearest to a sphere
These combs proved too large; they would break down readilyin hot weather. He also tried hives with frames in the shapeof a coffin, because he had noticed that bees rear their brood andcluster themselves in as near a round shape as possible. Thecoffin shaped frame was the nearest possible to a circle in a hivemade of lumber. The bees thrived in them. But the difficulty
was in placing supers on those hives. After a few years of trial
they were discarded also.
After a number of similar experiments, Dadant seniorfinally adopted a Quinby hive of 11 frame capacity, reducingit to 10 or to 9 frames or even to a less number for smallswarms, with one or two division boards.
12 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEKEEEPIXG
The ten-frame Quinby brood chamber which is now called
the "Dadant hive, "contains 1890 square inches of comb or
540 square inches more than the 10-frame Langstroth. That
this brood chamber is sufficient and the 10-frame Lang-
stroth insufficient, for the average prolific queen, in spring,
was ascertained positively by us when, about 1876, we handled
several hundred of these hives under exactly the same manage-
ment, side by side with 110 10-frame Langstroth hives, which
we had leased for honey production from an old Missouri
Fig. 9. Eight-frame Langstroth hive and Dadant hive side by side
beekeeper by the name of Barlow. During the month of Mayquite a number of the Langstroth colonies, having been given
supers of built combs, began to breed in those supers,
while none of the queens in the Quinby-Dadant hives occu-
pied the supers. This was clear evidence that it took more
DADAXT SYSTEM CE EEEKEEPIXG 13
than one story of Langstroth ten frame size to supply a good
queen with sufficient breeding room, at the time when we mustmarshal our forces for the harvest.
Additional evidences of the superiority of a large brood
chamber were plentiful when the results were weighed. Aside
from the fact that numerous old time beekeepers sang the praise
of large hives, even when only logs or boxes, we found that the
increased population, from ample breeding room given to the
queen, unhampered by divisions or spaces, secured a muchincreased harvest. Perhaps the most cogent evidence that wecan cite is the opinion of a farmer's wife on whose farm we hadlocated an apiary composed of both Dadant large hives and
ordinary Langstroth hives in about equal number, managed in
the same manner. We were paying these people for the rental of
the apiary site, in a share of the crop. The lady, who was a very
keen manager, asked us one day why we had brought any small
hives to their farm; why we did nor keep those hives at home.
She did not think we treated them fairly, for she could very
plainly see that the large crops came from the large hives and
she gave us to understand that she objected strenuously to our
keeping an apiary at their farm in future, unless we kept only
large hives there. Although we had seen for ourselves the ad-
vantages of large brood-chambers, nothing brought the matter
to our notice more forcibly than this avaricious complaint.
However, it was necessary for us to keep some bees in standard
Langstroth hives, for very few people have, until lately, been
willing to buy bees in such large brood chambers as we use.
And yet, for success, especially in running for extracted honey,
there is no comparison in results.
It is true that, with Langstroth hives of the standard size,
one may use a story-and-a-half or two stories, for brood. Buthere we found objections. When the queens ascend from one
story to another, compelled by necessity, to find room to lay,
they hesitate in turning back. We have seen and have often
had reports of queens laying in three stories, so that their
brood was scattered everywhere in those stories. So the using
of a small hive, to be made larger by doubling it, is only using a
14 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
more or less inconvenient large hive. An 8-frame Langstroth
hive is too small. An 8-frame Langstroth hive, doubled to 16-
frames, is too large. One may do as our venerable and most
practical friend, Dr. Miller did, reduce the 16 frames to 8,
when putting on supers. This gives the queen ample room to
develop her fertility previous to the honey crop, but it compels
the beekeeper to make numerous manipulations afterwards.
We want a brood chamber neither too large nor too small,
capable of accommodating the most prolific queens, in the main
apartment, reserving the upper stories for honey. We found
it in the hive in question.
Twelve and Thirteen-frame Langstroth Hives
A number of practical beekeepers, who have also discovered
the insufficiency of the 8 and 10-frame Langstroth hive, are
using hives containing 12 and in some cases 13 frames. These
brood chambers are equal in capacity to the 9-frame Dadant
brood chambers, but the great number of frames makes them
less desirable. Mr. C. F. Davie made the statement, in the
American Bee Journal for October 1919, that comparative
experiences between 12-frame Langstroth hives and the deeper
hives with a less number of frames were all in favor of the latter.
Small Hives
As we have shown in the preceding chapter, we ascertained
positively that small hives produce less bees than large ones,
because theydo not allow full scope to the queen for her breeding.
But this is not all. Small hives cause much swarming. Small
hives contain a scant amount of honey for winter. Small hives,
being less populous, their cluster is in greater danger in winter.
Small hives do not enable the apiarist to recognize the best
or most prolific queens, when he wishes to select breeders,
since they are in a reduced space. Small hives cast more but
lighter swarms than large ones. Small hives require queen-
excluders over the brood chamber to keep the queen out of the
DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 15
Fig, 10. Several stories of eight frame hives make too tall a pile
supers. Small hives have a smaller base of support than larger
ones, have to be tiered higher for honey capacity, cause a higher
climb to the honey-laden bees and are probably more difficult
to ventilate than larger ones.
It is true that small hives are cheaper than large ones.
But as they often have to be tiered higher and are more prone
to cast swarms, it takes a greater number of them to supply
an apiary. So the economy is much less than would appear.
Small hives, however, have the advantage of being easier
to carry to the cellar and back, easier to transport from one
apiary to another, easier for women to handle in making
increase.
An advantage in the manufacturing of the shallow hive
which has had great weight with manufacturers of hives is that
it may be made of narrow widths of lumber, since the standard
Langstroth brood chamber may be cut out of 10 inch stock
16 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
boards, while the Quinby-Dadant brood chamber has to be madeof lumber over 12 inches wide, which is now very scarce, or bepieced together with a tongue and groove joint. This has been
made less objectionable by placing the tongue and groove near
the top of the brood chamber, where it is covered by the strip
that supports the telescope cover.
Of late years, in a view of economy, even shallow brood
chambers have been made in two pieces. As this use of narrowlumber is likely to continue, there is probably little manufactur-
ing advantage in the shallower hive. We mention it only be-
cause of the criticism expressed by some manufacturers.
Many people, bee owners, rather than bee keepers, do not
think that their bees are doing well if they do not cast swarms.
For such people the small hive is a boon, for the swarms are
numerous. Commercial beekeepers view the matter in a
different light.
The greatest excellence of the small hive, in the minds of
many people, is its low price. But what would we say of a
farmer who built a barn insufficient to accommodate more than
one half of his live stock, hay and implements? As Mr. Lang-
stroth put it: "Hiving a large swarm of bees in a small hive maybe compared to harnessing a powerful team of horses to a babywagon or wasting a noble water-fall in turning a petty water-
wheel."
These are the qualities as well as the limitations of the
small brood chamber.
From the experience mentioned above, the writer came to
the following conclusions:
A large brood-chamber should be compact, sufficient for
all the requirements of the best queens and for supplying all
the honey that a populous colony needs for winter and spring,
as well as pollen for breeding.
There are several ways to increase the capacity of the
Langstroth hive. A 10-frame hive may be increased to very
nearly the proper capacity, equal to that of the Dadant, byadding a shallow story super such as we use for extracting.
The hive may also be doubled by adding a full story on top.
DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 17
We have tried both methods.,Neither of them suits us. The
explanation will be found farther along.
Fig. 11. Shallow brood chambers of the same depth as supers are recom-
mended by some
Shallow brood-chambers, six inches or less in depth, in two,
three or more stories are recommended by some. The Heddonhive which was so praised by its inventor about 1886 and created
quite a sensation, on account of the undoubted ability of its
deviser; the Danzenbaker hive, adopted and recommendedalso by capable beekeepers and dealers; both of these styles,
as well as some others of similar kind and on the same plan as
the eke or the nadir of old time beekeeping, have been used and
sustained, because the brood-chamber#could be "storified"
as the British say, to suit the requirements of the best or poorest
queens. One of the best commercial beekeepers of Texas, Mr.
Louis Scholl, uses such a brood-chamber and succeeds. His
IS DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPIXC
example, however, is not followed even among his neighbors,
and we believe we know the reason why.
mm
Fig. 12. Ekes or nadirs of by-gone days
In our experiments with bees, we ascertained a fact well-
known to the practical beekeeper: the cluster is, as much as
possible, in the shape of a ball; the laying of eggs follows a
similar plan; the queen begins in the center of the cluster, where
Fig. 13. The DeLayens long idea hive
DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 19
the most bees are congregated, and lays her eggs in a circle
around that center. This is very clearly evidenced when one
examines a comb of brood, the older brood always being at the
center.
If we stop to think a few moments of the work which is
required of the queen, in order that she may lay more than
3,000 eggs per day during weeks in succession, we will readily
comprehend that she must not lose much time. Should she lay
her eggs without method, here and there, she would be unable to
fill the cells with regularity and celerity. When she is about to
lay, she thrusts her head into a cell that she believes empty.
If that cell is clean and ready for an egg, she inserts her ab-
domen in it, lays the egg and proceeds to another cell. Without
a regularity continued for hours and days together, it would be
impossible for her to supply the numerous cells with eggs, so
as to leave few empty. She is therefore regular in her actions
and goes around the circle with but little loss of time. A very
old queen fails in this regularity and should be superseded.
Fig. 14. A regularly laid and well filled comb of worker brood
20 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
In a shallow frame, when she reaches the edge of the comb,
the queen finds wood instead of cells. This disturbs her and
often causes her to retrace her steps and go the opposite way.
Even only a cross bar, in a frame, will throw a queen out of
direction so thoroughly that she may put brood only on one
side of this bar. When she has to go from one story to another
she again loses a serious amount of time. When the season is
on for her active laying, she is fed so plentifully by the workers
that her eggs are produced and protrude from her abodmen,
whether she is able to lay them in cells or not. A good queen,
in a swarm, will often drop eggs in such number that they maybe noticed if the swarm is shaken upon a black cloth. A queen,
imprisoned in the hand, during the period of active laying,
will often leave eggs between our fingers. So if we would get
the best service out of a queen, we must put her in a hive which
will give her the greatest facility for finding cells without too
much search. This is to be found in a brood-chamber with
large combs, where the queen may lay for hours without being
turned away from her routine by obstructions of any kind.
When we wonder why a queen lays a greater number of eggs,
in a brood-chamber with few combs of large size, than in two
or more shallow brood-chambers, superposed over one another,
with a bee-space between each of them, the explanation is found
in the above statement. The same thing explains why, when a
queen has once gone into an upper story to lay, she hesitates to
return. She is more likely to go up into a third than to comeback into the first. But when she has ample room, on a limited
number of combs, to satisfy her propensity to lay, she is muchmore likely to be contented and there is more egg-laying, a larger
increase of population, with less swarming.
This, then, is the explanation of the advantage which
we found in results, in those large brood-chambers, as com-
pared with shallow ones.
Safety in Wintering
The advantage of the large brood-chambers is not only
in securing larger families at the right time—a large force for
DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 21
the harvest—it is found also in better wintering conditions.
The winter cluster of bees occupies a sphere-shaped space,
in from four to eight frames, in the center of the brood-chamber.
This cluster of bees is perhaps on an average 7 inches in diameter.
This means that, in a frame measuring eight inches in depth,
the cluster will probably be within an inch of the top. In a
frame measuring lOj/j inches in depth, the cluster will be 3^inches from the top. In the deeper frame, there may be 4 or 5
inches of honey, placed by the bees at the top of the combs.
In the shallower frame, under similar conditions, there will
not be much more than three inches of honey in the same position.
The deeper hive is therefore safer for wintering, if our bees are
compelled to remain clustered in the same spot for a number
of weeks, in very cold weather. As heat ascends, they will be
able to eat the honey above them when they would not be able
to eat honey at the end of the combs, away from the cluster.
This theory, again, is an explanation of the better wintering of
bees in the larger and deeper hive, which we found invariable
whenever a hard winter made a test of comparative conditions.
Frame Spacing
Another advantage of the large brood-chambers, which weadopted after the example of Quinby, is to be found in the
greater spacing of the frames. Quinby spaced his frames—and
therefore the combs of the colony
—
\]/2 inches from center to
center. He followed former apiarists, such as Dzierzon, in this,
and thought it the correct distance. Langstroth spaced his
combs a fraction over 1^ inches apart and thought it correct.
The manufacturers of hives of the United States, without
investigating the matter very deeply, made the spacing of frames
exactly l^i. They had good authorities behind them, for
Berlepsch, one of the leaders of the middle of the 19th Century,
asserted that this spacing was the one followed by bees. Adopt-
ing the Quinby hive, we adopted his spacing. When the matter
was discussed and we referred to the bees, in natural condition,
for their testimonial, we found that they make all sorts of spacing
22 DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
in building their combs, from one to two inches or even more,
from center to center. But they aim to have their worker-brood
combs a half inch apart, between the combs, which would
about represent the 1 3 8 spacing, from center to center.
All this may look very unimportant to the beginner. Yet
much of the success or failure of beekeeping depends upon
just such small matters.
The supporters of the narrow spacing look upon the wide
spacing as a detriment and Mr. Julius Hoffman, inventor of the
frame bearing his name, wrote:
"If we space the combs from center to center \)'2 inches, instead of
\^i, then we have an empty space of $4 inch between two combs of
brood, instead of l/2 , as it ought to be; and it will certainly require morebees to fill and keep warm a y% than a ]/2 inch space. Ina K inch space,
the breeding bees from the two combs facing each other will join with
their backs, and so close up the space between the two brood combs.If this space is widened to ^ the bees cannot do this, and more bees will
be required to keep up the needed brood-rearing temperature. Whata drawback this would ba in a cool spring, when our colonies are still
weak in numbers, yet breeding most desirable, can readily be under-stood."
This is a good argument but it does not work well in
practice, in large hives. When the breeding season ends, the
bees living between combs spaced 1^2 inches put more honey
in each brood comb, since there is more room and they do not
need, then, to keep the cells down to the exact length of the bee
chrysalis, as in breeding time. So the comb, or that part of it
that is filled with honey, is thickened so as to leave just the
necessary room for the bees to pass through. This gives a
larger amount of honey than in narrow combs; the bees con-
gregate there in greater number and thus winter better. Theyare more powerful in spring and the cycle of the year is reached
with better success.
The above theory is backed by facts. Bees in large, deep
brood-chambers, with the wide spacing, are stronger, winter
better, gain strength faster than those in shallow hives, all other
conditions being equal. The reader will remember that these
facts were established before we tried to explain them by a
theory. No theory is strong unless it is backed by the facts of
DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 23
experience. The experience must also be secured on a sufficient
scale to make it proof against possible exceptions. The testing
of this matter on hundreds of hives, in separate apiaries, treated
in similar manner, leaves but little room for doubt of the cor-
rectness of the theory. On half a dozen hives, other conditions
might change the result.
The spacing of combs, the wider way, has also some in-
fluence upon the question of swarming. This will be treated
in another chapter.
The Supers
The proper supers to use in beekeeping depend uponthe kind of honey that we propose to produce. If we are to
run our apiaries for comb-honey, we must have it stored bythe bees in a way that will enable us to sell it in the most satis-
factory and profitable manner.
When we began beekeeping on a large scale, the little
section, made of basswood folded and containing a pound of
honey or less, had not yet made its appearance. But sections
made of wood, holding from 2 to 4 pounds, had already been pro-
duced. Much of the honey was also secured in boxes, the average
of them being made of light wood, with one or more sides of glass
and of a size to hold 6 pounds, more or less. One or moreholes, an inch in diameter at the bottom of such a box, allowed
the bees to enter, but did not provide for sufficient ventilation.
So the supers used at that date were designed to prevent, rather
than encourage the storing of honey.
In producing large crops, we found the bees hostile to
small compartments. They would place hundreds of pounds
of honey in those large Quinby frames, if available, while they
very reluctantly stored a few pounds in small receptacles.
Other beekeepers have found the same thing. Oliver
Foster, years ago, wrote:
"When we take into consideration that the object, on the part ofthe bees, in storing up honey in summer, is to have it accessible for winterconsumption, and that, in winter, the bees collect in a round ball, asnearly as possible, in a semi-torpid state, with but little motion, exceptthat gradual moving of bees from the center to the surface and from
24 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
the surface to the center of this ball, we may imagine how unwelcomeit is to them to be obliged to divide their stores between four separateapartments, each of which is 4 inches square and 12 inches long, with
no communication between these apartments."
All the experiments made by us led us to the conclusion
that we could produce twice as much honey in frames located
above the brood combs, without hindrances to the travel back
and forth of the workers, the honey to be taken out of these
with the honey extractor which had then just been invented,
as we had ever produced in small sections or boxes.
But whether to use the double story, or a shallow story
for super, on the top of the large brood-chamber, was a question
upon which we had to experiment, for very little had been
done in this line.
The experiment was made on a large number of hives
both with the deep brood-chambers and the Langstroth hives.
With the former the matter was settled at once. The brood
combs were al^e^fer too large to be used in a super. There
was too muc» <$&ger of heavy combs breaking down, when
full of hone^ tQ^much trouble in extracting. Besides, a deep
super seen&d ^p attract the queen, when a shallow super did
not. WjA life Langstroth brood chambers, the objections to
a deep Ameirstory were not so flagrant; yet they appeared to
us qui^ sufficient to condemn it. There was often too muchroom at^*ie time, so much so that a number of people whodouble the size of their brood-chamber, previous to the honey
crop, often think it necessary to add the second story at the
bottom, instead of the top. Then these combs were not so
handy as those that we adopted at that time, for extracting
combs, with the advice of Mr. Langstroth. Shallow frames,
such as have been offered by dealers, are too shallow. Those
that we use are of the right size to be uncapped at one stroke
of the knife and yet they contain nearly 100 square inches of
comb, or over two thirds of the capacity of a standard Lang-
stroth brood-frame. Although we have often heard beekeepers
say that they could not tolerate two different sizes of frames
in their apiary, we find less objection to these extracting
DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 25
Fig. 15. Comparison of Langstroth and Dadant extracting supers
combs than any one can find to the use of sections for comb-
honey.
The fact that bees prefer large combs in which to store their
honey, instead of small boxes, has been also determined by bee-
keepers in many sections. In Texas, especially, many beekeepers
produce what is called "bulk honey or chunk honey," honey in
large combs which is cut out of the frames and marketed in tins,
with a sufficient amount of extracted honey to fill the interstices
between the cut combs. During a visit the writer made in South-
ern Texas, he was told that beekeepers could expectone third more
honey from their bees, in large combs running the full length
of the hive, than in small receptacles. This he believed readily,
for the assertion was in agreement with his own experience.
Aside from the reasons invoked by Oliver Foster, mentioned in
a previous paragraph, regarding the habits of the bees, the long
comb in the super is more easily reached by the workers, is moreeasily ventilated, and more homelike in every way. The colony
morale—to use an expressive phrase originated by Geo. S.
Demuth—the colony morale is enhanced by such supers, the
26 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
work with more entrain and often yield much greater
results.
An experiment made by us upon a number of supers, in
which both pound sections and full length combs were used, left
us not a shadow of doubt as to the bees' preference. Every
practical beekeeper knows that bees begin the storing of honey
in the super in that part of it which is nearest to the brood,
usually the center of the hive. Placing both full length combsand sections, supplied equally with comb foundation, together
in supers, but with the sections in the most favorable part, near-
est the brood, we saw the bees invariably begin their storing in
the full length combs, although remoter from the brood, and
they were filled before the sections were fairly begun. Anyexperimenter can easily test this himself.
Side Storage
In a former chapter, we mentioned very wide hives, with
side storage, under what is now termed "the long idea" system.
Such hives are used in a number of localities, but the very deep
hives are better suited to this method. So the most persistent
system of side storage is followed with the De Layens hive, con-
taining as many as 20 or more frames, 12 or 13 inches deep or
nearly square. The difficulty is that the queen is at liberty to
roam from one comb to another and may have a little brood in
most of the frames. Then the honey is difficult to extract. Weeven tried section boxes and storage boxes in the sides of those
hives. The bees prefer to place their honey close to the brood
and as much as possible above it. This side storage proved
inacceptable, whether in frames or sections.
Queen-Excluders
It is quite the custom for beekeepers to use queen-excluders
between the brood apartment and the supers, whether running
for extracted honey or for comb-honey. This is because the
average beehive is too small in its brood-chamber to accommo-
DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 27
Fig. 16. Queen excluders exclude ven-
tilation and free access to the supers
date the average prolific
queen. She fills it and
tries to go elsewhere. She
will naturally go up, since
the upper story is always
warm. The beekeeper is
then forced to use some
method that will confine
the queen within certain
limits.
In these conditions, the
queen-excluder comes into
good service. It is composed of a frame provided with a sheet of
perforated metal, with a bee-space above and below, and placed
between the two stories. This perforated metal was, as far as
we knew, first recommended by a Lorrainer cure, Collin, about
the middle of the past century. The perforations are of such
size that the worker bees can pass through them, but neither
the queen nor the drones can get through, owing to the greater
size of their corslet or thorax.
The first queen-excluders made were objectionable, con-
stituting a very serious obstacle to the free passage of the bees
and of ventilation. Ventilation is very important, as the bees,
in the summer months, are very numerous in the hive. They
need pure air as we do, and their great numbers increase the
temperature of the hive to
the danger point, unless
they can force air up
through the hive and out
again, so as to keep the
temperature below the dan-
ger point, or about blood
heat.
Fig. 17. Modern excluders are better
than the old, but are still in
the way of the bees
Queen-excluders are now
made, with wire spacing,
which are much less objection-
28 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
able. Yet they are still an obstruction to the free passage
of air and to the active travel of bees over the combs. Besides,
they are expensive, easily put out of service, and are often glued
by the bees in such fashion as to make their removal difficult.
We do not use them, for these reasons and the following:
With the large, deep hives, it is rare to have the queen ascend
into the upper story, unless she is seeking for drone-comb in
which to lay and cannot find any in her brood apartment. Butif there is no drone-comb in the upper story—and there need
not be any if we have used comb-foundation, she will have noinducement to move to the upper story. If she goes there acci-
dentally, she will go back to the lower story readily for the
very reason, already mentioned, that a queen likes to lay eggs
on large combs where the laying is not interrupted by the ob-
stacles of top and bottom bars and bee-spaces.
It is well, however, to say to the reader that bees do nothing
invariably and that there will be queens and occasions, even in
large hives, when there will be brood reared in the upper story.
But the quantity of this will be so limited that it will never be
profitable to use queen-excluders. This again was tested by us
on an extensive scale.
In the production of comb-honey, with small hives, on a
commercial scale, the excluder is often necessary, for without it
the queen may ascend into the comb-honey supers, lay eggs in
a few of the cells and thus spoil the looks and the value of the
honey for market. With our management, the production of
extracted honey and large brood-chambers, we have but one
term to describe the queen-excluder. It is a nuisance, rarely
necessary with our system.
CHAPTER 3
Drones and Drone Production
"The drone" wrote Butler, in 1609, "is a gross stingless
bee, that spendeth his time in gluttony and idleness." After 300
years, we cannot find a better description. The drones are the
male bees. They are reared in large numbers, in a state of nature,
in every hive, because the young queens mate, out of the hive,
on the wing, and it is necessary that each queen be enabled to
promptly find a mate, in the air. In domesticity, or when colonies
of bees are congregated in large numbers in a single spot, the
drones produced by one or two colonies are ample for the one
hundred young queens that may be produced ; since each colony
easily rears two or three thousand drones. The drone requires 25
days to change from the fresh laid egg to the perfect insect.
He never visits the flowers, goes out only in the warm part of
the day, to seek a mate, and comes home with a good appetite,
to feed upon the stores gathered by the indefatigable workers.
There is quite a little prejudice in favor of the drones amonga certain class of bee owners. They see the strongest colonies
produce a large number of drones, then swarm, and they deduce
from 'this that the drone, in some manner, is an influence of
benefit to the colony. Some say they keep the brood warm;others think that they encourage the bees to greater activity;
in short, they believe that, outside of his functions as male,
the drone has a beneficial influence upon the success of the
colony. They mistake the result for the cause. Bees rear manydrones when they are prosperous, but they are not necessarily
prosperous because they rear many drones. Similarly, if wemeet a man with a frock coat and a silk hat, we may conclude
that he is wealthy, but we must not ascribe the cause of his
wealth to the wearing of expensive garments. We take it to
be a result instead.
This matter of drone production and of their possible
usefulness was thoroughly tested by us. Selecting our best
29
30 DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
Fig. IS. Comb built without foundation or with only a small starter. It
is practically all drone comb
producing colonies, we supplied their hives with a plentiful
amount of drone-combs, so that the queens that we would rear
would be sure to mate with good sires. On the other hand,
we deprived colonies from which we did not desire males, from
the possibilities of producing a large number of drones. This
was readily achieved by removing from those colonies all the
drone-combs that we could find and replacing them with work-
er combs. Had we not replaced them with worker combs, the
bees would have rebuilt them with drone-combs, as they did,
in fact, wherever we neglected to do this. Bees prefer to
build drone-combs because the cells are larger and require less
material and less time, than worker-combs, so unless the queen
desires worker-combs in which to lay, and she usually appears to
make her desire known to them, they will usually rebuild the
drone-combs that we remove, in the same kind. There are
always some drone-cells, here and there, and, in the very best
managed hive, the. bees will probably rear from 200 to 300
DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 31
drones. But so small a number is not objectionable. It is the
rearirg of thousands which is expensive and worse than useless.
It is perhaps necessary to give consideration, in this chapter,
to the statement above mentioned, and made by superficial
observers, that the drones are useful in keeping the brood warm.
This belief was so common that in the old days, French bee-
keepers often called the drones by the name of "couveuses"
(setters); comparing them to the setting hens of the poultry
yard. But alas, the drones are reared at great expense by the
bees, at the beginning of the season, at a time when the workers
could more profitably nurse other worker-bees. When the drones
are hatched and begin to suggest to us the possibility of their
usefulness in that way, if a cold spell of weather comes, cutting
off the honey supply, the bees begin to drive them away, ex-
terminating them without mercy. With the return of warmweather, they again rear a horde of those useless beings, nursing
them and coddling them, until the end of the harvest points to
them the necessity of again ridding their home of these "idle
gluttons."
So it is very clear to us, as it must be to any impartial
observer, that the prevention of drone production, in hives
from which we do not wish to breed, is in the line of progress.
We therefore make it a rule to examine colonies in early spring,
and exchange their drone-combs for comb of worker cells.
Comb-foundation is not quite so safe; as we have seen, in rare
instances it is true, the bees build drone-cells over a worker
cell foundation. We have been told that bees will even tear
down worker-cells to build drone-cells in their place. This wedo not believe, for we have made the experiment of furnishing a
natural swarm with a hive full of drone comb and found thatthe
bees were incapable of grasping the possibility of tearing it downto secure worker-cells. They slowly and reluctantly narrowed
the mouth of the cells to the dimension of worker-cells and the
queen laid worker-eggs in them. There is no more probability
of their changing worker into drone cells than the reverse
This experiment was also tried by three leading apiarists ot
Europe with the same result. They were Messrs. Drory of
32 DADAXT SYSTEM OP BEEKEEPTXO
Bordeaux, Cowan of London and Bruennich of Switzerland.
The results which they obtained confirmed our own.
Although it is difficult to put in figures the economy in
honey secured by preventing the bees of a colony from rearing
2,000 or more drones, the attentive student will readily grasp
the advantage of the system. Two thousand drones take as
much room in the breeding cells as 3,000 workers. Thirty-six
drones are raised in a square inch of comb, while the same space
will accommodate 55 workers. The amount of food required
is similarly larger. But it is after they are hatched as full-
fledged insects that the difference in results looms up. The3,000 workers will be an army of active producers, while the
2,000 gross gluttons, staying home most of the time, get in the
way of the workers during the best and most important part of the
honey-producing day, from 10 to 4 o'clock.
It is true that we are not always sure of securing 3,000
workers in place of 2,000 drones, for the queen may not lay so
actively when she becomes tired ; but the economy will show itself
so plainly that the beekeeper who tries our method of doing awaywith drone-comb will never regret it. In fact we believe that the
saving in honey, from the prevention of undesired drone
production, will be sufficient to pay for a new set of combsevery three years.
Many apiarists have noticed the
objectionable features of over-production
of drones. But they have employed,
to do away with them, means that were
worse than the evil of the presence of
the drones. Drone-traps, which every
dealer in bee-supplies finds himself com-pelled to keep for sale, because they
are in demand among the ill-informed, are worse thanuseless. They hinder the bees in their flight, the drones crowdin them and stop the ventilation, the beekeeper is compelled to
examine them daily to remove the dead drones, and after all
they only do away with the mature drones, when the bees havegone to the expense of rearing them.
Fig. 19. The drone trap
should not be used except
in rare instances
DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 33
Other beekeepers make it a practice to behead the drones
when in the cells, before they are emerged. The sealed drone-
cells have the peculiar rounded appearance of a revolver bullet
in the shell, so they are easily seen. But when we cut off the
heads of this brood, we give the bees the unpleasant task of
throwing out of the hive all this dead brood, which they pull
out of the cells with a great deal of labor. Then, as soon as those
cells have been emptied and burnished, there is good chance
for the queen to refill them, with the same number of drones,
at additional cost to the bees, doubling the work and the expense.
It is therefore very important, and we urge it upon the
beekeeper who wishes to succeed, to remove all drone-comb
from every colony except those selected by him as breeders, re-
placing all this drone-comb at once with worker-combs.
CHAPTER 4
The Dadant Hive
In describing the hive which we have been using for years,
we will first give it in all its details. We will then show the de-
tails which may be dispensed with, in the use of as simple a
brood-chamber as it is possible to have while carrying on an
extensive honey production.
Fig. 20. Detailed cross-section of the original Dadant hive
AA, cross-pieces to support the bottom, 18x2x2. B, bottom, 25xl7^x
H. C, apron, 10x17 *AxH. DD, front and rear of the hive, 16Mxl2^x^.E, entrance, 8x}i. F, double board nailed at the rear, 18}4xl3xj4. GG,square slats to support the cover. H.lath, lAxl%, to widen the top edge
of the front board. I, top bar of frame, 2034x1 lA wide xj4 thick. JJJJ,
rabbets Y^ wide x ^i high, dug in front and rear boards, and furnished
with sheets of iron % inches wide, or metal spacers projecting 34 of an
inch, on which the frame-shoulders are supported. If the grooves are not
provided with these, their size should .be lAx*/i.
KKKK, shows how the uprights NN of the frames are nailed to
35
36 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
the top bar. M, bottom bar of the frame, \7-?4x}yixj4. NN, sides of the
frame, 11 Mx!56 xJ^. PP, front and rear of the cap, 18^x9x^. RR, front
and rear of the surplus-box, 16Hx6%x>6. T, empty space on top of the
surplus-box, 134 for the cloth and mat. U, top bar of the surplus-frame,
same as top-bar I. V, bottom bar of the surplus frame, same as M. YY,
sides of the surplus frames, 6xJ4x^.The space between M and B is about Yi inch; between DN, ND,
VI, RY, YR, should be Y to }i of an inch. Hives of every size can be
constructed on this diagram, with the only caution to preserve the spaces
of the width indicated. Both top bars are grooved on the under side for
foundation and wedge,
The hive body is made with a projection or rabbet, cut into
the two side boards, at the bottom, to fit down on each side of
Fig. 21. Details of underside of Dadant hive
DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 37
the bottom board. The rear is double. The inner rear board
fits down upon the bottom while the outer board drops downbehind it. This effectually encases the bottom on 3 sides. Thepurpose of this is to prevent cold air, moisture, moths, robbers,
&c, more effectively than with the ordinary bottom.
A wire guide, at the center, near the bottom board, keeps
the frames apart. It is more needed in a hive of this depth
than with the depth of the ordinary Langstroth hive, but it
could be dispensed with, especially with self-spacing frames.
The frame guides, at the point where the frame shoulders
rest, in the upper rabbets at both ends, were not used by us
H i /'W <
Fig. 22. Dadant hive open; a, body; b, alighting board; c, entrance block;
d, cap; e, straw mat;/, oil cloth; g, frame of foundation
38 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
until we found it necessary to employ inexperienced men in
our apiary work. Many old practical beekeepers still dispense
with the guides. We have never liked the self-spacing frames.
We made a large number of them, in the early days, similar to
the Hoffman frames, but their projections were finally all
whittled off by us, to secure loose hanging frames. The only
advantage we can see to the Hoffman frame is the possibility
of handling several of them in one handful. But we never open
hives unless we wish to manipulate them and we then prefer
to handle each frame separately.
More or less bees are crushed in the joints of self-spacing
frames, and where a great deal of propolis is stored by the bees
they sometimes stick together unsatisfactorily.
We made the bottom boards with the grain of the wood
running lengthwise of the hive. We have also made them with
the grain crosswise. We prefer the latter way.
The blocks, upon which the hive bottom is nailed, are use-
ful in keeping the hive up from the earth. When we use cement
stands, the blocks are not needed, as pieces Y% of an inch are
sufficient. The latter make the hive less cumbrous and lighter.
When colonies are taken to the low lands for fall flowers, as
sometimes practiced by us, the lighter bottom boards are
more convenient. In such cases, some sorts of blocks are used,
sometimes only stovewood blocks, to keep the hive bottom up
from the ground.
The double back of the hive is for the purpose of protecting
the colony better against cold. We aim to face the hives south
as nearly as possible, since the north side is always the coldest.
The double rear wall on the north, and the division board on the
west, we believe to be very efficient in protecting the colony
against cold.
The telescoping cover, reaching down ^4 of an inch all
around the body, and resting on a rim, was adapted from
Langstroth's original ideas, as shown in figures, 9, 13, &c,
of his original work. The greatest advantage of this telescoping
cap is the ability to cover the upper edge of the brood chamber,
in an efficient manner. After a few seasons' use of hives, the
DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 39
upper edges of the brood chamber and the lower edges of the su-
pers become rounded and worn so that it is often difficult to pre-
vent robber-bees from securing a passage through the gaping
joints. The telescope cap entirely prevents this, is also efficient
in covering feeders, placed over the combs of the brood nest, and
makes an excellent chaff compartment for winter-packing
material over the brood-nest.
A lA inch slat is used at the upper edge of the hive front,
to widen the projecting edge next to the rabbet. This mayseem a very unnecessary contrivance. Yet it is very useful,
as it helps us to fit cloths, straw mats, supers, &c, more readily
without leaving a smelling place for inquisitive neighbor bees.
Those who have kept bees for 25 years or more in the same hives
know how annoying the lack of adjustment sometimes is,
owing to wear and tear, and to the use of the hive tool in prying
apart the stories.
The division board is sometimes called a "dummy." Yet
there is a great difference between the two. A dummy is only a
board shaped like one of the frames, and of the same size.
It fills the place of a frame, but does not conserve heat
Fig. 23. The division board of the Dadant hive
any better than the frame of empty comb. Our division board
is closed at both ends, with a rounding piece of oil cloth, tacked
on it. It effectually prevents the circulation of air on the ends.
Of course, if we were to make it of the exact length of the inside
of the hive, we would have great trouble in moving it when
40 DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
necessary, because the bees would glue it fast. But with the
soft cloth on both ends, it is moved without jar and without
trouble. We remove it temporarily when we need room to
handle the frames, in searching for a queen, for brood, &c.
It is also moved up to the number of combs actually occupied
by bees and honey, when a small colony inhabits the hive.
The reader will bear in mind that the hive is made for 10 frames
and a division board, while an ordinary Langstroth 8-frame
hive, when full, has less capacity than 6 frames of the Dadant
hive. We may therefore have occasion to winter a small colony
on 6 frames, filling the space behind our division board with
forest leaves, or other warm material, and our colony will be
more compact and will stand a better chance of wintering
safely than the colonies in 8-frame Langstroth hives.
The division board, however, is not made to touch the
bottom of the hive, but a bee space is left under it. Our reason
for this is that, often, bees have found themselves imprisoned
behind a full depth board . Also, in manipulations, it is inadvisable
to use a board which may crush bees when put down in place.
Our board does not crush any bees and yet serves the purpose
of confining the heat of the cluster. Since heat rises, there is
but little deperdition of it at the bottom. Not so, with the
dummy, which is open on both ends and serves very little purpose.
The top slat, or top bar, of this division board, is made of ex-
actly the same size and thickness as the top bar of a frame.
It fits in the same rabbet and is not in the way of the supers.
The oilcloth over the combs has proven very superior
to honey boards, as the bees cannot glue it fast as they do a
board. When wre remove a honey board from the top of a brood
-
chamber, there is a commotion and a jar, for it is always glued.
In cool weather, the removal of such a board sets the entire
colony in an uproar, as a kick from the operator might do.
A cloth is pulled gently from the top of the frame and "peels
off" just as far as wanted, without any jar and without exciting
the bees.
We have used oil cloths, painted ducking, khaki, gunnycloth, &c. Anything which will confine the bees will do. Fome
DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 41
object to these articles because the bees tear them up. It is true
that they do so, in the course of time. However, if the cloths
are strong and well painted, they last a long time. Their use-
fulness permits us to put up with their inconveniences. Wereplace them as often as needed.
The oil cloth is constantly kept upon the hive, except
in winter. When putting on supers we place it at the top of
the supers.
The straw mat is an implement which very few people
use. It is essentially a European implement, cheap and service-
able. European gardeners use mats of all sizes, to protect their
cold frames, their hot house windows, their chicken coops or
rabbit dens. We make them of the proper size for the top of
the frames. They keep out the cold in winter and the heat
in summer. In winter, the cloth being removed, the mat is
placed directly over the combs, then absorbents over that.
It is one of the most economical implements of the bee hive.
Chas. F. Muth, an eminent beekeeper of the olden days,whom the
writer knew well, used similar mats and considered them very
valuable, as we do. But they do not seem attractive to the
average beekeeper. Yet they keep away the heat of the sun,
in July, as efficiently as the cold of winter, in January.
The telescope cover is made to accommodate at least the
depth of one super. It might be made much shallower, but we
have found it very handy in covering feeders. When more than
one super is on, the telescope cover does not reach down. At that
time it matters little whether the joints of the hive and of the
different supers are uncovered, for that is the time of the
honey harvest and bees do not try robbing then, usually.
The depth of our supers, as will be seen, is greater than the
depth of the supers popularly supplied by dealers. This depth
was decided upon by us, after due consideration and also con-
sultation with Mr. Langstroth, years ago. At that time, some
extracting supers were used of the same depth as the pound
sections, i. e. with frames A l/i inches in depth. We considered
these as mere playthings, of which too many would be required
42 DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
for the supers of our large and populous hives. We therefore
made supers that would supply frames with a 6*4 inch sidebar,
6y& in the clear. These combs are easily uncapped at a single
stroke of the knife. Deeper frames are less convenient andshallower ones insufficient. Later, some manufacturers madesupers with 5J 8 frames. We prefer our size. It contains about
?3 of the quantity of honey contained in a standard Langstroth
frame, is much more easy to handle, is uncapped in a single
stroke of the knife and runs much less risk of broken combs,
when the honey is fresh, the comb new and the weather hot.
For the supers, the spacing of frames is still greater than for
the brood combs. Most of our extracting supers contain 9
frames only, spaced about lj^ inches from center to center.
New frames containing comb foundation are first spaced only
1^2 inches, as the wider spacing would cause the building of
too heavy a comb of honey which would be frail, when new,
for handling and extracting. But after the first extracting, such
combs are strengthened by the bees and may then be spaced 9 to
a super of 16 inches in width. The \Y\ spacing gives us the con-
venience of thicker combs of honey and less of them to uncap,
thus producing more honey with a minimum of combs to handle.
It is well to state here why we make our super only 16
inches wide inside, while the brood chamber is a half inch
wider. It is for the purpose of fitting the cover or cap moreeasily over the supers. The half inch space adds to the conven-
ience.
As to the slogan' 'Only one size of frame in an apiary,"
so popular among bee men, we do not think it concerns the
supers. It is no more trouble to have full stories for brood
and half stories for honey than to have brood frames below and
comb-honey sections above. A number of noted apiarists of
the special honey-producing sections of the north agree with
us fully in this. So will the beekeeper who gives the matter a
fair trial.
A Simplified Dadant Hive
First of all, in giving the possibilities of our system with
simplified hives, we agree that it would have been best, in adopt-
DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 43
ng the Quinby depth of hive, to adopt the Langstroth length,
which is iys inches shorter. Not that we believe the Quinby-
Dadant hive too long, but because, had we adopted the Langs-
troth length, many manipulations wouid have been possible
Fig. 24. The story and a half
Modified Dadant hive
with a combination of the two. Thus, although we do not
propose to change the length of our hives, after using so manyduring more than a half century, yet we are quite free to advise
the use of the hive called in Europe the "Dadant-Blatt" and in
this country the "Modified Dadant."
But in using a style similar to the Jumbo, we do not recom-
mend the narrow spacing of l^i inches from center to center
for brood frames as made in the Jumbo. We insist on the
style of spacing which we have found very superior, already
mentioned, of lH inches from center to center, for the brood
frames. This was already mentioned in the chapter on "frame
spacing." In addition to the advantages mentioned there, wewill soon describe another having to do with swarm prevention.
The bottom board of a simplified Dadant hive may be madeplain, as in the common movable-frame hives sold by dealers.
44 DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
The hive encasing the bottom board has the great fault,
the minds of many apiarists, to prevent the tiering
up of hive bodies, since
the projections wouldkeep the upper hivefrom joining on the lower
one and the bees would
build comb between them.
This is true. But we have
found less need of tiering
up brood chambers than
the average apiarist
would imagine. However,
we are free to acceptthis as one of the leading
points in the making of
a simplified Dadant brood
chamber. We have used
hundreds ourselves with
plain bottom.
Fig. 25. Frames of the Modified Da-dant hive are the same length
astheLangstroth frames, but
2yz inches deeper
Fig. 26. The Modified Dadant hive has a 40 per cent larger brood combarea than the 10 frame Langstroth
DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 45
« ]
The number of frames should be not less than 10, especially
in the modified style, which is shorter than the regular Dadantand therefore contains a
less amount of surface.
The division board should
be retained. This meansan additional frame space,
or an eleven frame width.
The double back is
useful only in localities
where the bees are wintered
out-of-doors, without
packing cases. Whereheavy packing cases are
used or where bees are
wintered in the cellar, it is
better to have hives single-
wall all around. It is an economy and makes the hives lighter
for transportation. The encased bottom-board, Dadantfashion, is not indispensable.
Fig. 27 The Modified Dadant hiveis equipped with metal cover and
reversible bottom
We would retain the
slat, outside of the upper
rabbet, at both ends, as it
costs but little and makesthe supers so much morereadily adjustable. Wewould also retain the tele-
scope cover, for its useful-
ness, if its cost were not
objectionable.
Fig. 28. Tae bjdy is dovetailed and has eleven Hoffman frames spaced1
lA inches from center to center
46 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
Hive Making
The writer used to manufacture hives by hand. The fault
with such hives is that they are less accurate than those that are
;. 29. The regular Langstroth body may be used as a super for th:
Modified Dadant hive
made by machinery. We remember vividly the annoyanceencountered, in the early days, from having employed a carpenter
who carelessly cut the hives a quarter inch shorter than the
pattern; so the frames of one kind would not fit in the other.
It is very important that everything be exactly of the same size
and, when we can afford it, we should use factory made hives, or,
if we cannot make the hives ourselves, at least employ careful
help. We made and used hundreds of hives, cut with a handsaw and later with a foot-power saw. We painted our hives
ourselves, also, and did all this work in the dull season. We have
always given the preference to white pine for bodies and cypress
for bottoms.
As for the frames, it has never paid us to try to makethem by hand. Some styles of frames, such as the Hoffman, can-
not even be manufactured in a small saw mill, for it takes special
machinery to cut them in a profitable manner.
CHAPTER 5
Handling the Bees
We were already keeping bees on a large scale before the in-
vention of a practical bee-smoker. We used a piece of punk
or of dry rotten wood, upon which we had to blow in order to
produce a sufficient amount of smoke. The writer remembers
being often dizzy from blowing his breath upon the rotten woodthat he held in his fingers and which gave little enough smoke
when the bees were cross. The bellows smokers, invented byQuinby and improved by Bingham, are a greater boon than
our younger beekeepers, who have never had to do without
them, can realize.
There are men who are either immune to bees or whomthe bees do not sting. They handle them without smoke,
without veil, and seem to care nothing for angry bees. Wewere not, and we are not yet, of that kind. The writer was very
much afraid of bees in his young days. It was not until an
overwhelming honey crop came that he conquered his fear of
stings through enthusiasm. So the timid beekeeper should take
courage. But we never believed in handling bees without
smoke, using it, not plentifully, but judiciously, when opening
hives. Many an enemy has been created to the keeping of bees,
in suburbs, in villages, along the public highway, by careless
handling of the colonies by a beekeeper who is not afraid. Hedoes not get stung, but his neighbors, or the casual passer-by,
are the victims. Allow us to relate an incident.
We had a friend, now deceased, in the neighboring city
of Keokuk. His home was located on the edge of the bluffs,
with no neighbors between it and the Mississippi River flowing
below, 200 feqt away, an ideal place for the avoidance of bee
stings. But he had neighbors above him, up the bluff. He was
in the habit of opening his colonies without smoke. The bees
never stung him. He told the writer one day that he would have
to sell his bees, a dozen colonies or so, because the neighbors
complained of stings. He could not understand why they
should sting them, when they did not sting him. After this
47
48 DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
explanation, we walked to the apiary and he opened a hive
without using any smoke. Two or three angry bees, instead of
stinging him, began to fly about and attacked the neighbor's
dog, 40 feet away, up a steep slope. I called his attention to
this, advised him to avoid opening the colonies without smoke,and from that day on he had no more trouble with the neighbors.
You, inoculated beekeepers, who are careless and think every-
body ought to be as sting-proof as you are, take heed of this.
Consider other people's safety, if yours is secure, and do not
handle your bees at any time without smoke.
We always carry a veil. It may be kept in the pocket,
but should be always at hand, to be used in case of need.
We avoid disturbing the bees m cold weather, or in early
morning, or late evening. The best time for manipulations
we consider to be during the heat of the day, when most of the
old bees are busy in the field.
-
JFig. 30. Home apiary, where we kept bees over 55 years before the pub-
lication of this book
CHAPTER 6.
Our Apiaries
Our home apiary, where bees have been kept continuously
since 1864, is not in an ideal location for honey. In fact it is
only ideal for its sheltered position, in a gentle slope to the
southeast, under shading forest trees, which yet do not prevent
Fig. 31. A Dadant outyard. The Poland Apiary
the rays of the morning sun from striking the hives. We consider
shade very useful, in the hot summer climate of Illinois. Atone time we thought we had too much, as it had become very
dense. The bees had had several poor crops and we were in-
clined to ascribe the inactivity of the colonies to too much
49
50 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
shade. But before we had opportunity to cut down any of this
shade, (this was in 1903) we harvested one of the largest honey
crops that we ever secured. We concluded that it is difficult
to place the apiary under too much shade, in this climate. Weuse roofs, made of coarse lumber, over the colonies, and we believe
that it is profitable, both in the economy of wear of the hive
lumber and in the shelter it furnishes the bees during the warmseason.
In establishing an apiary, we believe it is necessary to
place the colonies in rows. But we do not wish great uni-
formity, great enough that the workers and especially the
young queens be unable to easily recognize their homes.
Fig. 32. Another Dadant outyard; the Holland apiary
With 30 or 40 hives, of similar color and shape, ranged in regular
rows, without outsideguide-marks, there is ample occasion for bees
to make a mistake, in their first flight, and enter the wronghive, on their return home. It is of little consequence with the
workers, unless too great a number of them should "drift" from
the weak colonies to the stronger. This is likely to occur more
DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 51
Fig. 33. The LeMaire apiary of the Dadant outyard system
1IK,'
52 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPIXC
or less. But the greater danger is when a young queen, return-
ing from her mating flight, enters the wrong home. She is almost
certain to be put to death, if the colony which she enters by
error is queenright. Then her own colony becomes hopelessly
queenless, unless, as is rarely the case, they still have sealed
queen-cells from which they may rear a new queen. At best,
the colony suffering from that accident is very much delayed in
its breeding.
For this reason, we like to arrange our colonies so that
every few feet, there will be some noticeable mark, such as a
tree, a bush, or a greater space between hives. It is sufficient
to call the beekeeper's attention to this, so that he may go to
the trouble of arranging the colonies in such a way as to avoid
the "drifting." Painting the hives of different colors is a good
way. But dark colors are objectionable, as they are too hot
in summer, and light colors soon fade. We know this by long
experience.
Outapiaries
We have had outapiaries since 1870. They have been located
in all sorts of spots, near the Mississippi River, where the water
cutaway half of the pasture; in timber land; on the open prairie,
among corn fields and wheat fields; on the lowlands of the Mis-
sissippi, where only fall blossoms abound; and along the Illinois
River, in a similar position. We did not find any ideal spot.
There are advantages to each location and disadvantages as
well. We hauled bees, in the heat of the summer, on hay racks,
a distance of 25 miles, when it was necessary to travel nearly
all night to avoid the exposure of the hives to August sunshine.
Nowadays, when we transport bees to the lowlands, we use a
motor truck and the trip which occupied 8 hours, in 1881, is nowmade in a trifle over two hours. The younger generation will
indeed never realize the hardships that the grandfathers had to
face. But our young generations are accepting tasks that wecould never have dreamed of and their hardships may prove equal
to ours, after all.
It is hardly within the scope of this book to dwell largely
DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 53
Fig. 35. The Koch outapiary of the Dadant System is located on the
edge of the Mississippi bottoms
on outapiaries. We refer the reader to the work "Outapiaries"
by M. G. Dadant, son of the writer, whose present experience in
that line is quite active. Suffice it to say that we have found,
within a distance of four miles, a difference in quality, color, andquantity of honey harvested. This shows that bees, in this
locality at least, do not usually travel much over 2 miles in
search of honey.
CHAPTER 7.
Apiary Management—Spring
One of the early requirements to which we attend in
apiary management is to ascertain that our hives are plumb,
from side to side. From front to rear, we want a little slope
towards the entrance, so that the bees will have less difficulty
in removing rubbish, dead bees, &c. It is also useful in keeping
Fig. 36. Another Dadant outapiary located on the edge of the Missis-
sippi bottoms. The Sack yard
out the rain water and the melting snow. Where we have
cement blocks for hive stands, there is less danger of the hives
becoming displaced in winter than where they stand on wooden
blocks.
The first spring examination is cursory. We make it when
the bees are taking one of their first flights. The purpose is
55
56 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
to ascertain whether they have sufficient stores to carry themto fruit bloom, and to clean out the dead bees from deceased
colonies and close them, so that neither robbers nor moths mayenter.
Queenless colonies are not looked for until the second
visit, shortly before fruit bloom. The weak, queenless colonies
are united with others, lifting their combs bodily, in a cool,
evening, to place them behind the division board of a queenright
but comparatively weak colony which does not occupy its entire
hive and will be benefited by the help. If both colonies have been
given a little light food, there is no fight.
We have also found the newspaper plan of uniting bees, given
by Dr. Miller, a very good method. It is used quite generally.
During a cool night, place one of the colonies, to be united,
over the other, separating them with a newspaper and closing all
entrances except that of the lower hive. The bees gnaw the
paper slowly and generally unite peaceably.
If the queenless colonies are not weak, as some times happei s,
we give them a queen purchased from a reliable Southern
breeder. We used to rear our own supersedure queens and it is
a desirable thing to do. But we have been too busy, for years
past, to spend any time at this work, which requires special
conditions. Southern breeders, if they are active and honest,
and there' are many such, can rear good queens by the time our
bees awaken from winter rest.
As a breeder is not always able to supply queens on short
notice, we are in the habit of placing an approximate order,
for an approximate time, early enough to get a part at least,
of the queens we will need.
Since we have gone into the keeping of over 500 colonies
of bees, we have taken less pains to save a colony which comes
out of the winter queenless. Yet, taking it all in all, it is not a
bad idea to keep this colony going if we wish to avoid having
empty spots in the apiary. W7e have often helped such a colony
with a comb of brood, early, then used it as we might use an
empty hive, in making a division, late in May. This is hardly
profitable, however.
DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 57
When we wish to examine the hives for the removal of
drone-combs, and the replacing of them with worker-combs,
which we consider of great importance, in all but the hives
which we select as drone producers, and when we have transfers
to make, as happens nearly every year, of crooked combs
caused by accidents, or of box hives purchased from old-fashioned
beekeepers, which we aim to secure in order to do away with
box-hive beekeeping, this work is done during early fruit bloom.
At that time, the colonies have the least bees and the least honey
and are more easily handled without danger of robbing. Methods
of transfer of the combs of box hives are given at length in "The
Hive & Honey Bee."
In this locality, a long interval of honey dearth exists
between fruit bloom and the first yield of the real honey crop,
white clover. This is not the case in many other locations,
in which some bloom or other fills the gap. During that interval,
it is necessary to look after the bees, for they often decrease
their laying in a serious manner. It may be necessary to feed
them and it is profitable to do so. But this is irregular, so
our system of action depends very much upon circumstances.
Rarely, the fruit bloom has yielded sufficiently to induce them
to continue breeding until the first clover blossoms appear.
Our action, at this time, depends upon those conditions. But wefind it indispensable, at any cost, to keep the bees breeding.
As Mr. Geo. S. Demuth, of the Bureau of Entomology, puts it
so clearly, "we must raise our bees for the honey crop and not
upon the honey crop." The following of the above axiom, for
years, has probably been the most positive reason of our success
in beekeeping.
The Honey Crop
We have had a number of seasons when the white clover,
whose bloom forms the principal crop of our locality, was en-
tirely killed by the drought of the previous season. In such
years, we are pleased if our bees make enough to support them-
selves till the fall harvest. It is during those years that we aim to
make increase, for we have bees in plenty and little for them to do.
58 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
Increase
We do not believe in natural swarming. So we do every-
thing that will tend to prevent it. Although "bees never dothings invariably," as very truly said by Dr. C. C. Miller,
we have very little swarming, little enough to render it un-
important and the watching for swarms a negligible matter. This
is of importance to us, since we are constantly busy at a variety
of labor, for we are not only beekeepers, but also dealers in bee
goods and makers of comb foundation, with a large force of
men under our direction. It is also very important not to be
required to keep a watchman at each outapiary. It is true
that there are seasons when the bees get ahead of us and whenit might pay to keep a watchman at each apiary. But these
seasons are rare. In 50 years past, we have remembrance of
only two, when the bees got so far ahead of us that we had
swarms, in great numbers, that were not cared for. A little
farther along we will give our method of preventing swarming.
We will first give our method of making increase.
We stated, in the chapter on spring management, that wedo not now rear our own queens. But as we have reared queens
for increase, at one time, we will indicate the method which
we followed when neither the Doolittle method, nor the still more
modern Barbeau method, were in use. The apiarist who wishes
to rear queens, in the most modern way, should refer to special
works on queen-rearing.
Queens for Increase
In early spring we remove as much as possible, all drone-
comb from the colonies, except from two or three which we desire
as drone breeders. These are among our best honey producers of
the previous year. We want them pure Italians, because
both past experience and breeding theories indicate that hybrids,
however good they may prove as honey producers, do not
transmit their qualities so invariably as a pure race.
We also prefer pure Italians to other foreign races, because
with the Italian we can readily recognize the least amount of
DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 59
foreign blood, while with recognized good races of so-called
gray bees, such as the Carniolan or the Caucasian, it is very
difficult, if not impossible, to detect a small mixture of the com-
mon black bee. The Italians, to our mind, have so thoroughly
proved their worth, that we seek no further than pure bees of
that race. Imported Italians have been our best bees.
With the method of removing drone combs from unde-
sirable colonies, we secure a very large percentage of good
matings, for the colonies from which drone-combs have been
taken rarely rear more than 200 to 300 drones, while we secure
several thousands in our selected colonies by placing drone combs
in the center of the brood nest.
We also select two of our best queens for queen producers.
When the time comes, at the opening of what we call the honey
**'***•
99 a
Fig. 37. Queen-cells hang downwards and are built preferable in open
spaces on new comb
60 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
harvest, we make a good colony queenless and exchange its
brood for a less number of combs of brood from one of these best
queens. By giving them a less number than they had of their
own, we make sure that the queen-cells reared will be well
cared for.
To secure a large number of fine queen-cells, we might
follow the Alley plan, or the Dolittle plan, but these belong to
commercial queen-rearing and we will not describe them. Theyare described in the Hive & Honey Bee and also in Pellet's
Practical Queen Rearing. A very good method is to supply our
breeding queens, 3 or 4 days ahead, with new combs or combfoundation cut with rounding edges at intervals, for the easy
production of queen-cells by the bees. When these combs are
full of eggs and young larvae less than 3 days old, they are just
right for our queen-rearing.
Queen-cells hang downward fron the combs. For that
reason, the bees, for greater ease, build them at the lower edge
of the combs, or in open spots among the brood. If we supply
the queenless hive with young brood, less than 3 days old,
and eggs, in combs that are fresh and only partly built, there
are numerous opportunities for the building of queen-cells in
the empty spaces. So a much greater number of queen-cells are
built upon such combs. It is nothing rare to have as many as
50 or 60 queen-cells on one or two frames of such comb.
The queenless colony to wrhich these combs are given,
immediately builds queen-cells, especially if it is fed with
very thin sugar syrup, in case the crop is not yielding. Uponthe ninth day, after the insertion of the combs, the cells should
be counted and as many divisions of other colonies may be madeas the number of cells that may be cut apart, save one which is
to remain in the queenless colony. We often divide the queenless
colony itself into 3 or 4 parts, closing up the parts that are
to be placed on a new spot, in new hives, often carrying them to
a cellar or to some cool place, till the next day. We take good
care to leave more young bees in the portions removed to newhives and new spots than in the hive on the old stand. Weconfine them to the space actually occupied, with division
DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 61
Fig. 38. A small colony is confined to such space as it can cover, by the
use of a division board
boards. Other divisions are made in different ways, according
to circumstances. We may take only 2 or 3 frames from a full
colony, with a large number of young bees, treating themin the same way as those above mentioned. Or we may divide
2 colonies to make one swarm, taking the brood from one and
leaving the bees with the queen on the old stand, and taking the
bees from the other by placing the division thus made on the
stand of the second colony and removing it to a new spot.
The colonies that are made from only 2 or 3 frames of brood
and bees, will need to be helped later with more brood andperhaps more bees, while those that are built from 2 other hives
are at once as powerful as the latter. The 2 or 3-frame colonies,
narrowed to such a space as they can cover, with a division
board, may be called "nuclei," while the others are at once full
colonies. The method of procedure depends entirely upon
62 DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
whether we wish to make much or little increase from the colonies
at hand. It also depends upon the question of whether weexpect to secure honey from our bees during that crop. If we do,
then we divide the lesser colonies into small nuclei, keeping all
our best colonies for honey production. We ascertained that
middling strong colonies, which may not be ready for the harvest
in time, are much more economical for the making of increase,
than powerful ones, as many of their bees will be reared "ow
the crop" instead of "for the crop."
The reader remembers that we make these divisions on the
ninth day after making our colony queenless. This is because
the young queens, ordinarily, begin to hatch towards the end
of the 10th day and we must insert a queen-cell in each of those
artificial swarms before the end of the tenth day. If we inserted
the queen-cells at once, on the ninth day, or waited till the tenth
day to make our divisions, many of those cells would be destroyed
by swarms that would not have yet ascertained their queen-
lessness. But on the tenth day, or about 24 hours after makingthe divisions, our small swarms are brought from the confine-
ment where they were placed and a queen-cell inserted in each,
in the middle of the brood combs, in the warmest spot. Theyoung queen hatches promptly, sometimes the same evening,
usually within 3 or 4 days, and in another week will be fertil-
ized and laying.
When we make divisions, if we moved the queenless part
to a vacant spot and released the bees at once, many would
go back to the mother hive or, if too young, might join somequeenright colonies; for a new home without a queen, has
little attraction for them. Dr. Miller and many others advise
leaving the swarm thus made in the apiary, closing its entrance
with a bunch of grass.
As we have had several colonies smothered when following
this method, we prefer to remove the hives to the cellar over-
night. This experience in the smothering of colonies is probably
due to the heat of the climate in this locality. By morning, whenwe remove them to a new spot and insert a queen-cell we have
no trouble and the bees seem sufficientlv reconciled to the condi-
DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 63
tions to remain, with the exception of a few of the old field work-ers who return to the old stand. If the swarm has been madewith an excess of young bees, there is no trouble.
Of course, the ideal method is to make one increase from2 colonies, as all three are strong at once and the damage suffered
by the colonies that have furnished this increase is shown only
in the lack of honey yield.
It is in either one of these manners that we have increased
our colonies, at all times, for we have never liked natural swarm-ing. It is now time for us to state in what manner we prevent
natural swarms.
CHAPTER 8
Swarm Prevention and Supering
There are many methods in vogue for the prevention of
swarming, but they are nearly all by manipulations which re-
quire a great deal of time, at the busiest season. The method
which we sustain as best and which we here describe requires
no active manipulations during the honey-gathering period,
outside of the usually necessary ones, and is what might properly
be called a "let alone" method.
As early as 1870, we found ourselves with a sufficient num-
ber of colonies to make swarming undesirable. Besides the
objectionable increase in numbers, swarming caused an increase
of labor when we were busiest. The method which we then
adopted has been in constant use by us since, with additional
improvements. We do not claim that swarming can be pre-
vented altogether, neither do we claim that it is as easy to avoid
it in the production of comb honey as in that of extracted honey.
But the success of our management during numerous honey
crops is ample evidence that the principles enunciated below
are in the right direction. The season of 1916 gave us more
positive evidence of its success, as compared to other methods.
Out of about 525 colonies, spring count, we gathered less than
30 swarms, but harvested over 200 pounds of honey per colony,
while a neighbor of ours, less than two miles from our homeapiary, gathered 12 swarms from five colonies, owing to his
neglect of proper attendance to their needs. The requirements
are as follows:
1. An ample brood-chamber for the needs of a prolific
queen. If the queen finds herself confined to a scanty lower
story by excluders or otherwise, she will make it known to the
bees or they will instinctively notice it themselves and prepare
queen-cells. The very large hives, large brood-chambers, and
easily accessible supers, that we use, are favorable to a non-
swarming disposition.
But even with an 8-frame hive, the prolific queens may be
accommodated. Doctor C. C. Miller uses a second brood-cham-
65
66 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
ber for prolific queens and removes this at the opening of the
crop, leaving in the lower brood-chamber the best brood-combs.
In some way, the queen should be accommodated during the
heavy breeding season, and especially at the opening of the crop.
As an outcome of the first proposition, there must be ample
room for stores. Some beginners are astonished to see old prac-
titioners, like Dr. Miller, giving their bees as many as three
supers at one time, on a strong colony. But if the queen is very
prolific, and has been breeding plentifully as nature dictates,
her colony may be able to work in each of two or three supers
as strongly as they would work in one.
2. The use of comb foundation in full sheets in the supers
when working for comb honey, or of fully built combs in extract-
ing supers, has also a great deal of influence, upon the prevention
of swarming. True, full combs are much more efficient in this,
but comb foundation aids greatly. There are days when the
crop is so heavy that all the available cells are at once filled
with nectar. If the bees have to build combs and thus find them-
selves crowded for room to deposit their loads, swarming mayensue. But with full sheets of foundation in every section, the
work of comb building is much simplified and the necessity
of producing sufficient wax reduced. Of course, it is understood
that the supers have been supplied to the bees before they found
themselves crowded for space, for if the swarming impulse is
once gained, it is next to impossible to overcome it by any man-
ipulations whatever.
3. It will be entirely useless to expect the bees to remain
contented and fill the supers, if the ventilation of the hive is
inadequate to the requirements of the enlarged population.
All observers have noticed the great tax imposed upon them by
the simultaneous increase of heat and discomfort brought about
by a summer temperature and a daily addition of some 2,000
or 3,000 or more hatching bees to the population of powerful
colonies. Yet many beekeepers do not think of enlarging the
means of ventilation. Thousands of colonies are compelled to
leave a large part of their population idle, hanging on the out-
side of the hive for davs and sometimes for weeks, because they
DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 67
are unable to sufficiently ventilate the inside of the brood-cham-
ber and supers. We must remember that every corner, every
story of a hive is in absolute need of a current of fresh air which
is supplied at great pains by establishing a line of fanning bees,
incessantly forcing pure air in and foul air out. Yet in manycolonies there may be but a shallow entrance, partly closed by
Fig. 39. Supers set back for ventilation in hot weather
68 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
clustering bees, and perhaps on the inside above the brood-
combs there may be some partitions, queen-excluders, separators,
honey-boards, etc., all in the way of ventilation. We raise our
hives from the bottom, in front, from one to two inches, v hen
there is a likelihood of the bees being unable to ventilate other-
wise. We have even set the supers back a half inch or so, during
the hottest days, to secure a current of air through the brood-
chamber in very hot weather. But this must not be continued
too long, for it might interfere with the storing of honey in the
forward part of the supers if the weather changed. The bottom
ventilation, however, must be ample, ample enough in fact to
allow all the bees to work, so that none will remain clustering
on the outside during the continuation of the honey crop.
4. As help to ventilation and comfort by decreasing the
heat, a good roof is needed when the hives are exposed to the
sun. We use coarse roofs on our hives, as stated before, even
when they are located in the shade of trees. Our roofs are made
very cheaply of large discarded dry goods boxes and are flat.
They are cleated with 2x2 inch scantling on the rear underside
and a 1x2 inch strip under the front end. This secures a slope
of an inch, which may be turned the other way to shed water
in rear. The roofs are much wider than the hive and shelter
the top from the effects of the weather.
5. The queen must be young. Some beekeepers believe
in requeening every season after the honey crop. We do not
believe in so radical a measure. In fact, we would not feel cap-
able of killing a first-class queen after only one season of use.
But we do believe in keeping only prolific queens and if the queen
has proven under grade she should be replaced. Old queens that
are losing their fertility are a frequent source of swarming. The
workers prepare to supersede them, by rearing queen-cells, just
as soon as they notice their reduced laying. The old queen in
a pique leaves with a swarm. So we must replace our old queens
every fall or late summer.
6. A large number of drones is an incentive to swarming.
Some of the old-time beekeepers thought the drones were bene-
ficial because the colonies having many drones swarm readily.
DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 69
They considered swarming a desirable thing. So it was, whendividing or artificial increase was unknown. They also thought
as already stated, that the drones were useful in keeping the
brood warm. So they would be if they did not have to be kept
warm themselves when they are reared and also if the bees did
not kill them, as they are sure to do, in bad weather.
There is not any doubt that the excess of drones in the hive
promotes swarming. Those big, noisy fellows remain in the way,
all day long, except for a flight during the warmest hours, being
then still more in the way of the active workers. Although, as
Dr. Bruennich says, there is a. certain fondness of the workers
for the drones, during the crop, which changes to hate after-
wards when they see them helping themselves from their hard
earned stores, yet their numbers make for discomfort and a
crowded condition.
In a state of nature, according to the best authorities, bees
build from one-seventh to one-tenth of their combs of drone
size, in the brood-chamber. If only one-twentieth of the combs
of a normal colony were filled with drone-brood, this would
supply nearly 2,500 drones per colony. We should permit only
two or three of our very best breeders to rear so large a number
of drones, for 5,000 to 10,000 drones are enough for any apiary.
Some beekeepers see no way to destroy drones but to use
a drone-trap. That is to say, during the busiest, warmest season,
when their bees need the greatest amount of ventilation, they
place in front of the entrance a cage made to catch drones and
queens, the very worst encumbrance that may be devised, for
the sake of catching the drones as they emerge, having to remove
them every evening or suffer the odor and encumbrance of dead
drones in front of each hive.
It is probably impossible to rjear no drones at all, but if
we remove all the drone-comb, early in the season, as nearly
as we can, and replace it with worker-comb, there will be drones
reared only in imperfect cells here and there or in out-of-the-way
corners. Instead of rearing 2,000 or more, we will perhaps rear
200 or less in each colony, a very important difference when weconsider the comfort of the colony. Remember that if we leave
70 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
the bees to their own devices, when we remove the drone-comb
in early spring they will be sure to build drone-comb in the samespot. So it is important to replace it with worker-comb.
There are instances, however, of bees building drone-comb
on imperfect worker foundation. They are rare and are usually
due to some defect of the foundation, which may have been
stretched slightly in laminating. At a meeting of the beekeepers
of Middlebury, Vt., in the summer of 1916, Mr. Crane men-
tioned having had about a dozen sheets of foundation thus
changed, out of some 2,000 used by him in 1915. These are only
accidents. Accidents also are instances of bees building drone-
cells on one side of the comb, wrhile worker-cells are on the oppo-
site side. In such a case the regular base is not followed and the
cells lap over, showing plainly that they were irregularly built.
Mr. Latham exhibited to us two square inches of such combduring the summer of 1916. Such combs should be remelted
and replaced by well built combs.
When we replace the drone-comb with worker-comb in
all but our best colonies, we do away with undesirable drones
for the mating of the queens. We save food which would be
wasted on these undesirable beings, since the drone costs at
least one-half more to rear than a worker, and has to be fed as
long as he lives.
Replace the drone-comb with worker-comb, as much as
possible in your hives, early in the season, and you will have
much less to fear of the swarming fever.
7. The last condition which we can mention in the success-
ful prevention of swarming is one which we have been using for
years, but which we did not think of in that connection until the
matter was brought to our attention by Mr. Allan Latham,
in 1916. In exhibiting a hive at the Storrs meeting, Mr. Lathammade the remark that the 1 3-8 inch spacing of combs, from
center to center, in common use, was a promoter of swarming.
We have used the Quinby spacing of 1 1-2 inches ever since 1866.
The bees work as satisfactorily with the one spacing as with
the other. In fact, the original advisors of either mode of spacing
had no very positive argument to advance in favor of their
DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 71
method. But the 11-2 inch spacing gives 1-8 of an inch addi-
tional between all the combs for the bees to cluster or move
about during the breeding season. This multiplied by the height
and length of the hive and by the number of frames gives an
addition of 162 cubic inches of clustering space or ventilation,
as the case may be. Think of the large number of bees which
may be accommodated in such a space.
The standard hives of the present day are nearly all of the
narrow kind. Nevertheless, the broader spacing is much the
better, for the above named reason and also because it gives
easier manipulation and more clustering space for the colony
in winter. As we have said, we used the wider spacing for years,
but did not realize that our success in swarm prevention was in
part due to this spacing. It is undoubtedly of great advantage
in the prevention of swarming.
Let it not be understood that we lay any claims to the total
prevention of swarming. That is a goal perhaps never to be
attained. Neither do we lay any claim to breeding a non-swarm-
ing strain. But when some of our most practical beekeepers,
such as we have met in the East, acknowledge, as one did, having
had as many as 18 swarms out, at the same hour, in one apiary,
we believe there is need generally of a more thorough understand-
ing of the causes of natural swarming.
The advantages of this method consist in doing away with
numerous hive manipulations during the honey crop, such as
cutting out queen-cells, taking out brood, shifting colonies,
returning swarms to the old hive, etc. All the required work,
outside of increasing the opportunities for ventilation and adding
supers, has to be done during the dull season. We know that
those who have excessive swarming, if they try these conditions,
will find themselves greatly relieved by the results. Besides,
they may be able to discover additional requirements, for there
is always something more to be learned. If we are to judge of
future progress by the past, there are endless opportunities for
more knowledge, endless chances for progress.
72 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
Putting on Supers
We have said enough in previous pages to suggest that we
are specialists in extracted honey production. The supers that
we use indicate it. We believe that enough more honey may be
secured, from combs built previously, to much more than make
up for the difference in price between comb-honey and extracted
honey.
Every practical beekeeper knows that beeswax is produced
in the body of the worker-bee, by special organs acting muchin the way of milk production in the cow, or in the production
of fat by animals like cattle or hogs. They are also aware that it
takes about as much honey, digested by the bees, to produce
a pound of comb, as it takes of food to produce a pound of fat
in domestic animals. This quantity is not fixed but depends in
its proportion upon the circumstances in which the secretion
is produced. It is safe, however, to assume from experiments
of scientists and from the experience of practical beekeepers,
that an average of ten pounds of honey is probably required
for each pound of comb. If honey is worth 15 cents per pound,
it indicates a cost of SI. 50 for every pound of comb.
In addition it is worth while to take into account the loss
of time to the bees, when they must remain idle for at least
a day to produce this wax, besides the time of building combs.
It is true that most of this labor is performed by young bees
during the 14 days of their stay in the hive previous to field
work. But when a yield comes, it oftens takes old bees as well
as young bees to produce the needed wax. So it behooves us
to save comb and return it to the bees after having emptied it
of its honey, when it has been harvested and ripened by the
bees.
Moreover, the production of extracted honey enhances
the facility for preventing swarming. Although the method
given in the former pages for the prevention of swarming is also
successful in comb-honey production, it is much easier to secure
an almost total absence of swarms with the production of ex-
tracted honey, because we save our super combs from one year
DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 73
to another. We have extracting combs which have been in use
for 40 years or more and which are now better than ever, for
the bees every season strengthen them by the addition of a little
more wax. Neither is there any loss of beeswax in the production
of extracted honey. Bees produce comb in large amount whenthey are compelled to remain filled with honey from one day to
another, for want of cells in which to store it. If empty combis supplied plentifully, a very small amount of wax will be
produced. Both practice and theory indicate this.
The supers are placed upon the hives at the opening*of the
crop of honey. This is perhaps ambiguous to beginners. But it
is necessary to have some practical experience to judge of the
exact time and even experienced beekeepers may put the supers
on too early or too late. We must leave this matter to be decided
by the good judgment of the apiarist. We often wait until our
best colonies begin to whiten their brood-combs with fresh bees-
wax at the top. Sometimes, if the crop opens with a rush, this
may be too late to prevent swarming preparations. If our col-
onies are very strong, it does not hurt to put the supers orta few
days earlier.
Very strong colonies may be given two supers at once,
though we prefer to give only one, waiting to put on the second
super until the first one is about half filled.
Supers that are already filled with combs fully built during
a previous season are a great attraction to the bees. The pro-
ducers of comb-honey who follow the method of Dr. Miller and
others to place a few already built sections in each comb-honey
super, as baits, to attract the bees there, will readily realize what
a marked influence supers of comb already built have upon the
production of honey. Few people recognize the great cost of
comb to the bees. Yet supers are filled more than twice as readily
when already full of drawn combs as when given to the bees
with only guides or even with comb foundation. Powerful col-
onies, in a very promising season, may be given as many as 3
supers of the large size that we use, at the very outset, and fill
them readily.
Our visits to the bees are timed according to the prospects
74 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
of the crop. The weather has a great influence upon results.
After several days of rain, during one season, we found a numberof colonies of great strength, to whom supers had been given,
actually starving. Super combs, partly filled with honey of the
previous year, and saved for that purpose, were given them,
among the empty ones in the supers. Three days later, the warmsunshine had changed conditions so quickly that we found those
same combs of honey heavier than when given. The bees hadalready gathered a sufficient amount to store nectar in the supers.
When adding second and third supers, we sometimes put
them on top of the first, sometimes between it and the brood
apartment. If the bees are scattering their honey well, there is
no need of lifting a heavy super to put another under it. But if
they are rather conservative and crowd their honey into the
combs closely, it may be advisable to place the added supers
between the stories.
When the crop nears its close, we sometimes find it profitable
to equalize supers, so as to find everything full when we removethe honey. For instance, a strong colony may have 3 supers,
of which one may be still half empty while the other two are
full. Its neighbor may be a colony below average, with one super
only, and this only a third full. It is evident then, that the
stronger colony will fill its remaining empty combs sooner than
the latter. We exchange a few full combs from this strong colony
for empty combs of the other, so that, if the crop ends in a week,
we will probably find both colonies with full supers.
A super, two thirds full, may be exchanged from a strong
colony with that of a weaker one, that has barely begun storing
in the only super it has had. Both will probably be found full
a few days later.
In these equalizing exchanges, if the crop is on, we do not
bother with removing the bees from either super, for bees rarely
fight when the new comers are found with full stomachs. In
this they are very much like human beings. We smile upon a
man who comes to us with gifts; but the beggar, unless he suc-
ceeds in interesting us in an apparently true misfortune, gets
little sympathy and a cold welcome.
CHAPTER 9
Fig. 40. The bee-escape board lends
itself to modern honey production
Extracting
We aim to extract the honey as soon as it is ripe, and, if
possible, before the crop has quite ended. The reason of this is
obvious. It is not so pleasant to remove honey during a dearth,
as during a honey flow.
But a great deal of the
honey must be left upon
the hives until the crop
is over.
On the afternoon
preceding the removal of
the honey, we put on the
bee-escape boards. This
operation is quickly per-
formed with little fatigue,
because of the method
employed, which does not
require the lifting of the
supers more than one end at a time, balancing them over a
cross piece which supports them until the escape board is
slipped on the brood apartment.
Some persons object to the bee-escape. So did we, before
we gave it a thorough trial. Now we have bee-escape boards in
sufficient number to supply one for each colony and we find the
use of them a great economy of labor. After from 7 to 14 hours,
only an occasional bee is left in the super. The only time when
bees fail to leave the super is when the queen is with them or
when there is brood in the super. They evidently consider it
their duty to remain with the queen or the helpless brood and we
should not criticize them for it, as it is evidently good judgment
on their part.
We have to be careful, when putting on bee-ecapes in times
of dearth, not to allow of any passage from the outside for
robbers, as they would help themselves to the combs of honey
that are deprived of their bees.
75
76 DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
Fig. 41. Using mud to close gaps between stories made by the hive tool
on supers long in usa
Tracks or gaps that may exist between supers, especially
when they have seen some 25 years of use, are readily stopped
with a little wet clay. The Europeans use cow dung mixed with
DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 77
Fig. 42. Method of lifting supers to put on escape-board
the clay. It makes a stronger cement. Beginners, with new hives,
may laugh at the makeshifts of the practical beekeeper. But the
time comes when they find themselves compelled to use similar
makeshifts.
78 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
It is well, in very hot weather, in our latitude, to avoid
leaving those unoccupied supers on the hives during the hot
part of the day, as the heat might cause the combs to break
down, the bees being no longer there to ventilate and lower the
temperature of the super.
If the crop is still on, no precautions need be taken in return-
ing the supers to the colonies. In fact, it is necessary that they
be returned as promptly as possible, for the bees are idle mean-while, if the brood chamber is full. So we make due haste in
returning them as fast as emptied of their honey. We saw,
during an excellent honey harvest, supers that had been emptied
two days before again supplied with fresh honey in every cell.
Such harvests are rare, however.
If we have a number of spare supers, we save some trouble
by making an exchange, putting on the empty supers as fast
as the full ones are removed. Very often, however, in a bountiful
harvest, all spare supers have been given to the bees before
extracting began. A half dozen, sometimes, are retained from
the first colonies harvested, to exchange for full supers as we go
along.
If the season is at end, we pile all the supers, as fast as
emptied of their honey, in the honey house until evening. Ashort time before sunset, those supers are returned quickly,
everybody helping, to the colonies from which they were taken.
This prevents the excitement of their return from lasting long
enough to cause robbing, since night prevents further hustling
on the part of the excited bees. When morning comes again,
everything is quiet.
If the honey is not well ripened, we use honey tanks to
store it. But as we have numerous outapiaries and the honey
might not be safe in tanks away from the home yard, we use
alcohol barrels of good quality and thoroughly dry, to contain
the crop. These are emptied at leisure, in vessels of different
capacity, as occasion requires.
It is sometimes necessary to haul the supers to the homeapiary or central plant, to do the extracting. The writer does
not like this method as well as that of local extracting. Yet it
DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 79
undoubtedly has some advantages that cannot be secured in
local extracting, because of greater facilities. Each apiarist
must decide this for himself. Our principal objection to it is
in the necessity of hauling the supers back and forth and the
fact that the honey cools and thickens after being removed from
the hives and is more difficult to extract. Some beekeepers whouse a central plant find it necessary to heat the room overnight,
at least, to warm up the honey for extracting.
Fig. 43. First honey extractor of Hruschka. The infancy of the
development of centrifugal force
80 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
Extracting Implements
The senior Dadant was already keepingbeeswhenHruschka,of Dolo, near Venice, in 1865, invented the centrifugal honeyextractor (smelatore). This invention was described in the
American Bee Journal, three years later, in April, 1868. It mayseem strange to a modern student that so important a discovery
should have been 3 years in coming across the ocean, but whenwe remember that there were only 3 or 4 magazines published
on beekeeping at that time; none then in Italy; that the trans-
atlantic cables were just beginning their useful activity, it will
be easier to comprehend the slowness of the spread of so useful
a discovery.
There were no manufacturers of bee supplies, no dealers
in hives or smokers, at that time, in the United States. So the
only way to secure an extractor was to have one built at home,
Fig. 44. The first extractor made in the United States
was the pattern of our first extractor
DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 81
after the cut given in the American Bee Journal, Volume 3,
page 189. Our local tinner was employed to make the tub, of
strong tin instead of wood. The blacksmith made the basket
Fig. 45. Uncapping at a single stroke of the knife owing to the proper
depth of super frames
82 DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
frame, and a churn gear furnished the power. But the fly netting
which we employed as screen for the baskets was too flimsy and
allowed the combs to bulge in the baskets, so as to break. Addto this the fact that we did not yet have super frames but had
to extract from full-sized brood combs, that our combs were not
very straight in the frames, since comb foundation was not yet
in use, and you will realize how much trouble it was to extract
honey in the pioneer days.
But the honey was splendid—what we did secure—so muchso that the first dealer to whom we offered it replied very tartly
that he did not want any sugar syrup; that whenever he did
want some, he could make it himself; that he knew honey whenhe saw it and had never seen any that light in color.
The coarseness of the extractor was not the only disagree-
ing. 46. Robber Cloth and pan protect the supers from robbers during
extracting
DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 83
able feature of the newly discovered method. We had no utensils
for handling the honey and cappings. A butcher knife, later
a thin-bladed knife, served as uncapping knife, and we can still
remember the relief brought to the work by the invention of the
Bingham knife, whose beveled edge kept the cappings from
sticking again to the combs, after having been shaved off. Anordinary dishpan served us for several seasons, as a capping
can. This had to be emptied, every few hours, into a sieve with
side-boards, draining over a 5-gallon earthen jar.
After 4 or 5 years of this infantile and ridiculous method,
or lack of method, we decided to have a large strainer built which
would hold the cappings of a whole day's extracting. Manu-facturers of honey extractors had then come into being and weordered from one of them a can of the same size as an extractor
can, with another can in-
side of it. The latter can
had a screen instead of a
bottom and was ten inches
shallower than the outer
can, its bottom resting on
a pivot in the center of the
outer can and its upper
edge on the inner edge of
it. This was the "capping
can," named "Dadant un-
capping can" by dealers,
which is now often replaced
by a long trough with
double screened bottom in
the honey house. We prefer
the capping can to any-
other implement for hold-
ing cappings, because it
may be transported like an
extractor, because it is
light and easily cleaned.
Some such implementFig. 41. The Original Capping can is
still in use in the Dadant Apiaries
84 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
should be used. We have several of them, so that we can allow
the cappings to drain dry.
We do not like the capping melter sold by dealers, which
heats the cappings enough to melt the combs and separate the
wax from the honey as fast as harvested. True, it does fast
work, but it colors the honey, injures its flavor, and produces
too much heat at a time when the weather is already as hot as
the apiarist can endure.
We find no trouble in handling the cappings. The honey
falling with them into the capping-can drains more readily if
the fresh cappings are well stirred about every half hour. This
stirring with a sharp, clean, firm slat or stick breaks them up into
small bits and greatly aids the draining of the honey. After 24
to 48 hours of draining, they are emptied into a barrel of which
one head has been removed. When the season is over, we mayhave several barrels of these cappings and the entire lot is ren-
dered at one time into beeswax. There is no loss of quality in the
capping honey and the wax rendering is done in one operation.
Sometimes we wash these cappings preparatory to rendering
them. The sweet water thus secured is made into mead or vine-
gar. Nothing is lost.
The amount of cappings secured from a given amount
of extracted honey we find to be about 1 per cent. So when we
have a crop of 50,000 pounds of extracted honey, we can figure
on approximately 500 pounds of the finest quality of beeswax,
after it has been rendered and purified. We used to get a larger
amount of cappings. That was when the combs were crooked,
or more or less wavy, before we used full sheets of comb-founda-
tion. It was also more difficult to do the uncapping. We use
also a less number of combs in the super than in the brood-
chamber. At first, when the bees are given the plain sheets of
foundation in the super, it is necessary to have the same number
of combs as in the brood-chamber. But after they are built,
they may be placed farthe. apart. At each new crop, the bees
strengthen them by adding more wax. They also thicken them
so that we may use as few as 9 super combs in the super of an
11-frame hive. This gives thicker combs of honey and there is
DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 85
less uncapping. These deep cells are also less likely to attract
the queen who requires shallow cells to lay eggs. So the danger
of breeding in the super is lessened by the use of a less number
of combs in it.
Robbing
We spoke of the possibility of annoyance by robbers, when
returning supers of combs to the hives. As a matter of course,
these combs are sticky with honey. If the crop has ended, the
odor of the honey attracts robbers. That is why we return them
to the bees in the evening only. Some people do not return them
at all till the following spring. We object to preserving them in
this shape, for several reasons.
First. The honey with which they are still slightly smeared
is likely to gather moisture, for honey is exceedingly hygro-
metric, absorbing moisture readily from the air. W7
e at different
times had honey to ferment in the cells, during the season fol-
lowing, owing to the presence of a small quantity of this fer-
mented honey in combs that had not been cleaned.
Second. Combs which are sticky with honey are much
more attractive to both mice and bees and therefore are more
difficult to preserve over winter.
Third. The same trouble is likely to occur when we place
these supers on the hive in the spring, as we fear at harvest
time. Their strong odor attracts robbers to the hives to which
they ar3 given.
Some people allow the bees of the different colonies to
clean out the supers, after the crop is over, by exposing them
in an open spot of the apiary, until all the honey has been carried
out. We have found this to give incentive to robbing and do
not like the practice. Besides, if a neighbor has bees, they are
likely to come and help themselves also. We believe in being
neighborly, but not to that extent.
When robbing has begun on a colony, if it is not worth
saving, we break it up and give its combs to other colonies to
protect, after having first gotten rid of the robbers.
If the colony is worth saving and we find that it is robbed
by only one other colony, we stop the robbing by exchanging
sti DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
Fig. 48. Supers returned to the hives after the last extracting of the year
the two colonies for each other, placing the robbing colony in
place of the robbed one and vice versa. A little flour, sprinkled
over the escaping robbers, readily indicates their home.
If the robbing has just begun, it is usually sufficient to throw
a bunch of grass loosely upon the entrance of the robbed col-
ony. Its home guards station themselves in that grass as in
trenches and pounce upon the robbers who soon give up the
attempt.
But it is much easier to forestall robbing than to stop it
after it has successfully begun. Therefore we take the greatest
care to avoid exposing any honey while extracting.
We use both robber-cloths over the supers while carrying
them and tin pans under them, to avoid dropping any honey on
the wheelbarrow used, or on the grass, or on the clothes of the
apiarist. It is worth while to be careful. One experience with
robbing is sufficient to teach us a useful lesson.
DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPIXG 87
While working about the apiary, the apiarist sometimes
finds himself followed by robber bees which appear to under-
stand that they may find profit in shadowing him. We have
Fig. 49. Super combs which have been in use for over fifty years, and
are fully as good as at first
often stopped our work for an hour or so on this account, or
perhaps have gone to work at the other end of the apiary to
baffle the robbers.
The worst thing to be feared from robbers is not during the
harvesting of the crop. It is when there happens to be disease
in the apiary and we find ourselves compelled to open the hives
that contain this disease in a period of scarcity of crop. This
matter will be considered at the chapter on diseases.
Varying Honey Crops
In our locality, as in many others, the honey yields are
divided into two very distinct seasons, the summer crop and
88 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
the fall crop. The flavor, quality and color of the honeys of
these two seasons being very distinct, it is necessary to keep
the crops separate. Then also there is sometimes quite a dearth
between the two, during which the unsupplied swarms must be
looked after, just as we do in spring.
Requeening
It is usually during this short season that we replace the
queens which have passed their period of usefulness. Some peo-
ple change the queens in their hives every season. We believe
that a queen is better in her second year than in her first. Ex-
ception must be made, however, with the queens that are in-
ferior, by positive test, in their prolificness or in the generation
which they produce. Such queens should be replaced as soon as
possible.
We allow" good queens to become fully two years old before
we think of removing them. The removal and replacing with
young queens is done with stock purchased from queen-breeders
of known integrity, whose breeding stock is known to us and
approved as to purity and prolificness.
Rearing one's own queens, from known stock of good honey-
producing qualities, is certainly the very best way, even though
a beekeeper in the North may find it cheaper in dollars and
cents to buy the queens already reared, from a Southern State,
where the season lasts longer and bees are not so valuable for
honey production.
The advantage of rearing our own queens is that we knowexactly what the parentage is, as far as the mother is concerned
at least, and if we use a little diplomacy, it is often easy to Ital-
ianize our neighbors' bees to secure pure matings. We have
repeatedly, in bygone years, Italianized colonies for neighboring
bee men, at one dollar per colony, taking all the trouble upon
ourselves. We found that it paid us in the long run, as we secured
more pure matings; since the neighbors are not so careful as
we are in doing away with drone-combs and rear more drones
than we do. This is just a suggestion to the careful beekeeper.
DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 89
Queens will mate with drones from colonies a mile, or two or
more away. We believe the drone travels the greater part of the
distance.
Some beekeepers rear queens from the very best honey-
producing colony in their apiary, regardless of whether the
bees of that colony are of pure breed. We do not. Experience
has taught us that fixed qualities are very rare in hybrids. Be-
sides, the workers produced by a hybrid queen are usually cross
in disposition. Pure Italians have our preference. There are
other races equally good, such as the Caucasian. But Caucasian
bees are of gray color and a slight mixture with the common
race is difficult if not impossible to detect. Italians are very
good bees and have the advantage of showing impure blood
readily. We prefer them to any other race. We have tried the
Cyprian, the Carniolan and the Caucasian. The latter we would
take, next to the Italians. The Cyprian are too cross. The Car-
niolan show too great a propensity for swarming.
Queen Introduction
Some very practical men introduce queens in hives, dur-
ing the honey crop, by simply removing the old queen, smok-
ing the hive thoroughly for a little while, allowing the new
queen to run in at the entrance and closing the entrance for a
few minutes. This method has its drawbacks, for it is unsafe
in any but a good honey-gathering season. Some people believe
in making the colony queenless ahead of time. We don't. Wewait till the new queen is there before removing the old one. Webelieve it a good plan to cage the old queen, for an hour or two
previous to killing her, in the cage in which the new queen is to
be introduced. It gives the cage the odor of the old queen and
appears to make safe introduction more secure. Caging the
queen on the brood-comb for a couple of days, we consider the
best method of introduction. WT
e have had less losses with this,
method than with any other.
CHAPTER 10
Nomadic Beekeeping
It sometimes happens that, after the first crop, the weather
is so dry that the bloom's prospects are poor for a fall crop.
Fig. 50. The Mississippi bottoms viewed from the Koch apiary on the
edge of the bluff
Sometimes also, the first crop is a total failure from drouth.
We have had one or two unprofitable years from too much wet.
But most of the short crops have been due to drouth.
When the uplands are dry, the bottom lands or low lands
near the Mississippi are usually thriving, owing to the early
floods which recede in summer. So we practice nomadic bee-
keeping.
91
92 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
Our first attempt at moving bees to the pastures, in the
midst of summer, was in 1881. During that season everythingof value to bees on the hills, dried or wilted in June and Julv.
,N0fVTH
South
Fig. 51 Chart of the Dadant apiaries in 1880Each circle has a diameter of 4 miles.
The low lands, having been covered with water until the begin-
ning of July, a very rapid growth of fall plants began as soon as
DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 93
the waters receded. Polygonums or knot weeds, (smartweed)
especially of the variety persicaria, also called heartsease ; Spanish
needles or bidens, also called burr-marigolds; boneset and nu-merous other low land plants, formed great fields of variegated
colors, yielding splendid golden honey.
Fig. 52. Map of the Dadant Apiaries in 1919
Each circle has a diameter of 4 miles,
94 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
Something over a hundred colonies were moved by us on
hay racks, during some of the very hottest weather of that year,
a distance of 25 miles.
Luckily the nights were cool. The colonies were so short
of stores that some did not even have brood. So, by moving
them during the night, we had no difficulty in transporting them.
The trips took about 8 hours, including nailing them up and
opening them on arrival. The result was very satisfactory and
proved profitable.
No total failures happened again for a number of years
and it was only in 1918, 37 years later, that we again resorted
to moving bees in summer. But at this time, we had auto trucks
and we were not compelled to travel at night, though most of
the hauling was done early in the morning. In 1918 and 1919
Fig. 53. Moving bees on Auto Trucks
DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 95
we thus hauled a large number of colonies to the low lands
(400 in 1919), with profit.
The advent of the auto truck has certainly made a revolu-
tion in nomadic beekeeping, as a man can readily enough haul
even rich colonies from one place to another. To confine them,
we usually entirely nail up the entrance, as we find that the
old bees are apt to worry on the screen, if screen is used to close
it up, since that is their usual exit. We remove the cap and the
supers, hauling them separately, and each colony is covered
with a wooden frame entirely screened over, with cross pieces
Fig. 54. Closing brood-chambers with screens for hauling in hot weather
9G DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
to protect the screen. Thus 400 colonies were hauled from 21
to 30 miles without any loss. They were brought back to the
original apiaries in the fall during frosty weather. At that tim€
no ventilation is necessary. A deep wire cover gives them sum-
cient air.
In addition to the advantage of bringing bees to rich pas-
ture,we believethere is a gain in what Mr. Demuth calls "morale"
in the behavior of the bees, when they are transported. We have
often noticed that bees brought to a new spot, whether it be in
spring or fall, and having to learn a new country, become more
active. It seems to increase their energy, their morale, to find
themselves in new fields. We are not the only, ones, besides
Demuth, to have noticed this. Others have spoken of it also.
It sems to act upon them as upon pioneers who go forward
to new countries, for we believe that the great energy, the posi-
tive activity, of the American people, are due to their having
been pioneers in new spots as yet uncultivated. Bees may be
induced to more activity in several ways and we believe this
is one of them.
A similar argument is brought forward by a beekeeper of the
Netherlands, who, after having described the nomadic methods
of Hollandish beekeepers, who move their bees to the heather
fields every summer, asserts that the moving of the bees increases
their activity and the breeding propensity of their queens. Wemight cite similar opinions from several other noted apiarists
CHAPTER 11
Fall Management
When the end of the crop is near, we find it advisable to
make sure that our bees are putting enough honey in their brood
combs for winter.
With comb-honey production, it is often noticed that the
bees have crowded so much honey in the brood combs that they
have little room for breeding. The colony decreases in numbers,
especially if the crop lasts to a late date.
With our management in the production of extracted honey,
large brood chambers and very free access to a number of supers,
it may happen, if we are not on the lookout, that our bees will
have a contrary experience, an insufficient quantity of honey
in the brood combs. We believe in a very large amount of stores
for winter and spring. The old way was to figure on 25 pounds.
We want 40 pounds at least to make sure that there will be no
shortage and no stint in the spring breeding. To obtain this,
we crowd the bees for room ; that is to say, we allow them a little
less super room and this forces them to put a sufficiency in the
brood combs. Better have 50 pounds than only 25.
It is not advisable, however, to cramp them so that the
fall breeding will be neglected. A colony wintering on mainly
old bees and a limited number of you«ig bees is not likely to
succeed as well as a colony that has bred freely till the late fall.
This question requires j udgment on the part of the apiarist. Evena very experienced man will make mistakes in this matter. Muchalso depends upon the conditions at the end of the crop. In
many seasons the amount of brood reared, before cool nights
come, depends upon the field conditions.
97
CHAPTER 12
Wintering
If we have a sufficiency of honey in the brood combs, a
good strong colony of bees upon those combs, we have the best
possible conditions for winter, provided the honey is of good
quality.
We had very expensive experience with honeydew, har-
vested in July and retained in the brood combs for winter. Wehad similarly great losses with fruit juice, apple juice, grape
juice, etc., harvested by the bees in September-October, during
a dearth of honey. The season of 1879 was especially discourag-
ing, for, while the bees did no damage to sound fruit and only
gathered grape-juice from bird-damaged grapes and sweet cider
from damaged apples, many of our neighbors thought that wewere getting rich at their expense, supposing that our bees were
transforming all that fruit juice into good honey. The truth
of the matter was that many a bee was unable to even reach
home with the fermented juices that it gathered, in lieu of good
honey. Although we tried to take out of the comb all the cider
and fermented grape juice that they thus stored in the cells,
there was enough left to poison them during the cold days.
Honeydew, fruit juice, cheap syrups, and honey containing
many pollen grains, are bad winter food. To keep warm, the
bees must consume honey and they must have as pure saccharine
matter as possible, as all grades of sweet food containing acids,
vegetable matter, starch, etc., leave a large amount of residue
in their intestines, which they must discharge out of the hive,
on the wing, or suffer from diarrhea or dysentery. This is dis-
charged in the hive, upon the other bees of the cluster, if the
weather is too cold for them to void their feces outside. Thatis why many of the most practical apiarists feed their bees the
best quality of sugar syrup to complete their winter stores.
It is a good method to follow, even if some desk-educated apiar-
ists affirm that bee diseases are due to the use of sugar in bee
food. We are quite willing to grant that, for spring food, nothing
is better than honey, because of its containing matter which
99
100 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
helps build the body of the young bee. But when the bees are
full grown and confined to the hive, nothing is better for them
than the purest saccharine matter. So we have always madeit a point to remove all honeydew and late-gathered, dubious
sweets, harvested during a shortage of flowers in fall.
If the bees are short, we add to their stores by supplying
them, in inverted can feeders, in the month of October, with
sugar syrup made of 2 parts of high grade cane sugar to 1 part
of water. If they do not take it too fast, they will assimilate it,
or in other terms invert it, by their saliva, just as they do with
pure nectar. If there is danger of the sugar not being sufficiently
inverted, it is a good plan to add to the food about one fifth
of its weight in good honey, with the quality of which we are ac-
quainted. This point is important, for it would not do to use
unknown honey that might bring them disease, such as foul-
brood.
In our entire experience, we have had 5 or 6 winters when
the amount stored by the bees was insufficient to carry them
through. Whenever the amount of good sugar syrup given
the bees, in addition to their own stores, was sufficient, we
regularly found them to winter better than if they had used
only natural stores. So we are very much in favor of sugar feed-
ing whenever the colonies are short for winter.
Whatever be the conditions, we aim to have our bees in
proper shape for winter long before the opening of cold weather.
Just as it was necessary to get them to breed plentifully until
the chilly days come, so it is necessary that they should quit
breeding when there are no more bees being lost from overwork
or accident. We want plenty of young bees for winter, but we
do not want them to have an amount of brood to care for, when
winter opens. At that time, the quieter they are, the better
it is for them and ourselves.
Cellar Wintering
We experimented largely on both cellar and outdoor winter-
ing. For 15 or 18 years, we wintered the bees at our home apiary
DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 101
in the cellar and occasionally also at an outapiary. We dis-
continued it because, in our latitude, there are too many win-
ters when a number of warm days make it undesirable to have
the bees in confinement. We are just a little too far south for
regularly successful cellar wintering. If we could foresee the
weather, we would put them in the cellar for the cold winters
and keep them out-of-doors during the mild ones.
Our House Cellar
In 1875, we built a house in which a hot-air furnace was
placed. We separated a space, measuring 12x22 feet, from the
main cellar, with a double-wall partition. The parts of this
room that had the outer wall exposed to the weather in winter
were also lined with boards and shavings on the inside, so as to
avoid the sudden changes of temperature. This bee-cellar, whentoo cold, was readily warmed by opening the partition door
that separated it from the main cellar. In case of too muchheat, two windows could be opened and in fact remained open
most of the winter. But both the air currents and the heat were
easily regulated.
In this cellar we wintered bees for some 15 winters, with
very good success. The failures were always due to mild weather,
when the sun would permit the outdoor bees to fly and our
cellared bees were restless. Ice was tried to cool the cellar but
it did not seem very practical. We finally abandoned cellar-
wintering altogether as unnecessary in our latitude. We have
seen many cellars, in locations further north, and we think the
hillside cellar, with a well-protected entrance, on a level with
the apiary, is the ideal cellar. It must be deep enough in the
hill to be immune to temperature changes.
The degree of temperature that we considered the mostdesirable in the cellar, was from 42° to 45°. Messrs E. F. Phillips
and Geo. S. Demuth, of the Bureau of Entomology, section of
beekeeping, at Washington, have made extensive experiments
and they hold that a temperature of nearly 50 is requisite. It
would be very unreasonable to differ with them, after the positive
102 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
tests and extensive experiments made by them. The tempera-
ture, as recorded by us in the cellar, might admit of 50 at the
top of the hives. But there is a very safe way to adjust the
advice to give the novice. Have a thermometer, try to find the
degree at which your bees are quietest, and hold it at that.
Kverybody agrees that this is sound advice. When the bees
are happy, we can just hear a slight rumble, a "bruissement"
as the French call it, much resembling the quiet rustle of the
leaves among the trees or the whisper of the waves on a distant
shore.
Wintering in Clamps
We also tried wintering in clamps, long ago. For two win-
ters, we put our bees in a clamp, just as we would potatoes or
cabbage, with the only difference that we had draft holes, for
the ingress and egress of ventilation. This method would cer-
tainly be successful in cold climates. It failed with us when
we had a wet winter, the ground of the silo being soaking wet
during the greater part of the winter. The bees suffered from
mould and came out in bad shape.
Wintering Out-of-Doors
This was the final method adopted by us. W7e tried colonies
in sheds, sheltered by closing the shed in stormy weather and
opening it on warm days. This method was very satisfactory.
But sheds for hundreds of colonies are not practical. W7e tried
putting large dry goods boxes over some hives, during the cold.
This was also good, provided we uncovered our colonies in warm
days.
We tried what has been called "chaff-hives," with 2 inches
of chaff or sawdust all around, above and below the hive body.
This was good but entailed the making of very expensive and
cumbrous outer-cases, which made the hives difficult to trans-
port, especially as our hives are already very large. A chaff-
hive of the Dadant pattern weighed 80 pounds, empty. In addi-
tion, during one winter we found that the bees which were con-
DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 103
Fig. 55. Hives packed for winter out-of-doors
fined by the cold needed a flight as often as the weather warmed
sufficiently. The colonies in our chaff-hives failed to take flight
whenever there happened to be just one warm day, because
it took more time for the warmth of the atmosphere to reach the
cluster, than with single-wall hives.
We finally adopted the method which gave us the least
amount of expense, while securing a good average of wintering,
for the winter climate that we have in our locality. The hives
are double on the back, as noticed in the description. The brood
chamber is reduced to the actual capacity of the colony, by
removing all empty frames, if any, and moving the division
board to reduce the space as much as possible. Then forest
leaves are used both in the body and in the cover, as protection.
The oilcloth is first removed, and the straw mat laid directly
104 DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
Fig. 56. A three-colony winter-" -
over the frames, so that the moisture from the bees ma}' escape
gradually through it into the leaves of the cap, without causing
a draft of ai r.
The hive is then wrapped with forest leaves, held in place
with wire netting of the kind used for poultry yards. A piece
of netting of the proper size is laid behind the hive, leaves spread
upon it and both ends brought together in front, which is alwaysfaced south, southeast or southwest. In this way the hive is
efficiently protected from fierce north winds, but the front is openso as to permit the rays of the noon sun to strike it fully. YYhen-
ever a warm day comes, usually about once or twice a month,the bees are able to fly, void their excrements and often rearrange
their cluster.
Heavy snows are not objectionable, if they do not cut out
the ventilation by thawing and forming ice about the openings.
We usually see that the snow is piled freely behind the hives,
DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 105
with an open entrance when a thaw comes. Many people object
to letting the bees have a flight in snow time. It is true that
many get lost on the snow, unless the weather is quite warm.
But we have always noticed that the hives whose bees get the
freest flight in snow time, turn out as good as the best.
We never disturb them, for any purpose whatever, during
cold weather. Even if we wish to pile the snow on the north
side of the hives, we go at it very cautiously, so as not to awaken
them, as the few bees that would leave the cluster might be
chilled and lost.
Many people believe in what is called "sealed covers" over
the brood combs. We don't. We tried this to our heart's con-
tent. During the winter of 1884-5, one of the hardest that weever saw, every colony which had absolutely sealed covers over
the cluster, was pitifully soaked by the melting of the ice which
formed from the bees' respiration. Wherever the bees had covers
in which the moisture could escape slowly through the absorbents
in the cap or cover, the colony wintered in much better condition.
This test was made by us accidentally. We had on the
hives, right over the top of the frames, oil cloths some of which
were more or less damaged by the gnawing of the bees. This wasneglect on our part. But as it happened, we found the neglect
to have been beneficial. For wherever the oil cloth was perfect,
the upperescape of moisture was prevented. The moisture settled
over and around the bees, congealed there, to thaw out and soak
them as soon as the weather moderated. In the hives where the
oil cloth was more or less damaged, the moisture escaped amongthe leaves of the upper story, the bees remained dry and condi-
tions were much more satisfactory. Thus, the poorer the "sealed
cover" the better the success.
Let it not be understood that we want the bees to havean open super above their combs. No, we try to have for themwhat we want for ourselves in a cold winter night, a warm, wool-
ly, moisture-absorbing cover, that will at the same time retain
the heat. We have no use, either for ourselves or our bees, for
an impermeable cover that will confine moisture near the body.
We do not urge the adoption of the above system of winter-
106 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPIXC
ing by any one. In wintering, perhaps more than in any other
part of the management of the apiary, much depends upon loca-
tion. Let each man judge of this for himself.
Outer winter cases of different models have been recom-
mended. Some are made to contain 4 colonies; others 3, others
still only one. If our opinion is desired, we gladly recommendthe 2-colony winter case which does not require the moving of
the hives of bees for winter. Two hives may be kept all summerin close proximity to each other; so that they may be incased
together without trouble. Whenever we move any hives of bees
for winter, we cause more or less of what is called "drifting."
Drifting is the loss of direction by some of the bees, because
of a disturbance. Whenever some of the colonies are moved,there is drifting. The strongest colonies then gain the greater
number of the drifting bees, because they make a greater call,
a more discernible noise, which draws the lost bees. So the weakcolonies are weakened and the strong colonies strengthened
by the "drifting." Very expert beekeepers, with large practice
in the use of the packing cases, have acknowledged to us that
drifting was one of the main drawbacks of that method.
If the packing of colonies, singly, in thick packing boxes,
in a way that they could not at all feel the cold of winter, wasnot so expensive, it would be the ideal way of wintering bees,
even in very cold regions. We have not adopted this methodbecause of the great expense it entails. Our method has been
sufficient and although we have lost heavily in a few abnormal
winters, we succeed quite regularly. Our losses are not over
4 or 5 per cent, one year with another.
CHAPTER 13
Diseases of Bees
If any one had asked us, 20 years ago, how much trouble
might be expected from bee diseases, we should have probably
shrugged our shoulders and answered that they were very in-
significant and hardly worthy of notice. For 40 odd years after
we began beekeeping, the only disease we saw in the apiary wasdiarrhea, also called dysentery, from which the bees suffer moreor less after a protracted winter, especially when their food is
not of the best. Spring dwindling, which is a result of this dis-
eased condition, is of importance only in rare seasons and late
springs. There is less of it with strong colonies than with small
hives.
Foulbrood, in either of its two different forms, was entirely
unknown to us. In 1903, the writer had to go as far as Colorado
to be able to see some rare samples of it, rare because the bee-
keepers who had it in their apiaries kept it under control byconstant fight.
It was not until the spring of 1908 that we found the disease
among our own bees. We had been feeding them some very fine
western honey, which we had on hand, so as to avoid buying
sugar, thinking that the bees would return that honey with
ample interest in a very few days. Whether this was the cause,
or whether the American foulbrood which had been noticed
in many parts of Illinois had just reached us in some other way,we found it very much scattered among our bees, although noneof the colonies had more than a few cells of it.
We did not hesitate in treating the bees. We transferred
every colony by the method recommended in text books of the
most modern date. We will give the method in a few words.
We go to the first colony, remove it from its stand and put
upon that stand a clean empty hive with frames containing
only a few starters of foundation. All the bees and the queenare shaken into it and treated just like a natural swarm. Thecontents of the hive are removed, the brood is burned, the balance
of the combs rendered into wax, the honey being heated for
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108 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
at least a half hour to the boiling point of water. When the
hive has been emptied, it is singed with the flame of a tinner's
gasoline torch and, after supplying it with frames, it is then
ready for the transfer of the next colony. This work succeeds
best when it is done, as we did it, just at the opening of the honey
harvest, and with the greatest care.
After 48 hours, the bees are again shaken onto full sheets of
foundation, or on combs from healthy colonies if such may be
secured. This method is called the "starvation method." Bythis is meant that the bees are deprived of their combs and placed
where they must build combs. So they consume all the honey
in their honey sacks, producing wax. This method was entirely
successful on the disease which is called "American foulbrood."
All the text books describe it. But we might as well give a short
description of it here.
In American foulbrood, caused by bacterium named "Bacil-
lus larvae," which was discovered and named by Dr. G. F. White
of Washington, the unhatched bee dies just about the time when
it is sealed in its cell by the workers. Its body decays, turns to
a brown coffee color, has the odor of joiner's glue, and when a
toothpick is inserted into it, it strings out, like so much liquid
rubber, to the length of 2 or 3 inches. These 3 symptoms, whin
together, indicate positively the existence of American foul-
brood .
We succeeded fully in doing away with the disease and
afterwards harvested the largest crops that we ever secured.
But since the disease is in existence in the country, we find it
necessary to be constantly on the alert and treat, without delay,
any colony in which it is found, even if only a few larvae are
diseased.
Neighbors of ours, who made light of the disease when
it first appeared, saw their colonies absolutely ruined in a very
short time. Two or three men near us quit the bee business
entirely, from discouragement. Yet beekeeping was never so
profitable as it has been since it requires greater vigilance than
formerly.
We also had a fight with European foulbrood in one of our
DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 109
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110 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
apiary. No combs should be exposed, no honey allowed to be
robbed, no bees permitted to enter other hives, for in each of
those instances there is danger of transmitting the disease. Thusfoulbrood should be treated at the beginning of a honey crop.
If we find ourselves compelled to treat it at other times, it must
be done when the bees are quiet, when there are no robbers about.
When American foulbrood is treated properly, with the
greatest care, there is but little danger of its reappearance
except from outside of the apiary. Not so with European foul-
brood ; for it seems to reappear mysteriously.
We also met with "sacbrood," a disease of the larvae in
which they die and dry up, so that they may be shaken out of
the cell. This usually disappears of its own accord, when the
good season comes. It may be due to faulty queens.
We no longer fear bee diseases, though they are unpleasant
to meet. Vigilance is necessary, it is true, but in nothing can
we expect to reap a reward without labor. It is quite probable
that the time will come again when the foulbroods will be as
rare as they were 50 years ago. We read in the text books of
the first half of the nineteenth century, that some of the leading
scientific beekeepers, such as Dzierzon and Berlepsch, had their
apiaries well nigh destroyed by the diseases before they found
methods of cure. Earlier still, Schirach, in the Eighteenth Cen-
tury, discovered that the cure of American foulbrood was to
be found in depriving the bees of all honey and compelling them
to use that which was contained in their stomachs, because honey
is the most active transmitter of what is called "American foul-
brood."
There is a very destructive disease of the adult bees called
Isle-of-Wight disease, in the British Isles. But traces of a similar
disease have done very little harm in this country. However,
a disease called paralysis, vertigo, May disease, etc/, appears
from time to time in different parts of the world. We have seen
it, but only on a very limited scale, and it usually disappears
with the beginning of the honey crop.
For a more thorough description of all the bee diseases we
refer the reader to our larger work "The Hive & Honey Bee."
DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 111
But let us give one warning: Do not feed to your bees unknownhoney, no matter how fine it may be. There is no doubt that
honey may be entirely healthy for human beings and yet contain
enough of the bacilli of foulbrood to contaminate any colony
to which it is fed. Pay no attention to the men who tell you that
sugar is not good for bees. If you have to feed the bees and have
none of the honey of your own production, better give themsyrup made of the very best sugar. There will be no danger of
disease
CHAPTER 14
Enemies of Bees
We have found no enemies of bees quite so bad as our own
selves, when we are neglectful or too avaricious. We have occa-
sionally removed too much honey, to our sorrow later.
The moths have never done much harm in our apiaries,
because we promptly accepted Mr. Langstroth's statement that
there is no more danger of a healthy colony of bees being de-
stroyed by the moths than there is of a healthy cow being killed
by carrion flies; although a queenless colony will be just as
readily riddled by the maggots of the moth as the body of a
dead cow will be consumed by the maggots of carrion.
We keep our empty combs from year to year, during the
winter in a cold honey house, where the thermometer often goes
down to zero F. (—18° C). Neither larvae, eggs nor moths can
withstand such low temperatures. In the summer, if the honey
house is kept well closed, there is still no danger. But, in the
summer, we usually have all our combs in use where the bees
care for them better than we could. Hives in which the bees
have died at the opening of spring are usually the most fertile
breeders of moths, for moth worms often winter in out-of-the-way
corners, kept alive by the warmth of the bees. Wr
ere it not for
such accidental wintering of the live grub, moths would become
well nigh exterminated in these northern countries. Such combs
should be treated several times during the spring and summer
months and it is better to keep them out of the bee house. How-
ever, if the treatment is thorough, by burning a quantity of
brimstone in an earthen dish, with the supers and combs piled
in broken tiers, so as to allow free circulation of the gas produced,
the quantity of brimstone that will kill the flies in the room will
also kill the moths. The quantity to be used must depend upon
the size of the room and its greater or less ability to retain the
fumes.
We also use carbon-bisulphide, poured upon a rag and laid
at the top of a pile of supers, closing the pile carefully to allow
the evaporating gas to penetrate in all the crevices. Care must
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114 DADAXT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING
be taken not to bring a flame near, as this gas ignites and
explodes.
Other enemies of bees are too insignificant to find a place
in this short treatise.
We will here give a few rules that we consider important,
in our climate at least:
We never face colonies northward, as the bees often get
chilled near the entrance to their home in unpleasant weather.
We never move colonies of bees, even a few inches, with-
out placing a slanting board in front of the hive, to cause them
to notice the change of location.
We never disturb colonies of bees in cold weather.
Fig. 58. Low, moist, rich bottom land that is good for honey production
We never try to winter a colony that has less than 6 combs.
Such a colony might be wintered in the cellar, if it has sufficient
stores. Smaller colonies are united.
W^e never close colonies to keep them from flying because
of snow or rain or other reasons, except to transport them. Weconsider that enough bees worry themselves to death to make
DADANT SYSTEM OF BEEKEEPING 115
up for those that would leave and get lost in the cold or in the
rain.
We never use drone traps, moth traps, separators, queen
excluders, entrance guards, etc. Separators are useful in comb-
honey production, but not with our system.
We never cut our queens' wings. We do not disapprove
of the practice, but we do not find it necessary in our system.
Conclusion
In our description of the Dadant System of beekeeping
we do not wrish to be understood as advising the average bee-
keeper to change from any system that he now uses. There are
tens of thousands of beekeepers using 8-frame Langstroth hives,
10-frame hives of the same depth, and even other patterns, with
good success. Our own success, for more than a half century, has
caused inquiry as to our methods. That inquiry led to the pub-
lication of this work. WT
e have no apology to make, but neither
do we urge the following of our system nor the adoption of our
hive. The only thing which we consider absolutely indispensable
in modern beekeeping is the use of a movable-frame hive of
sufficient capacity for the prolificness of the queens. But there
is no doubt in our mind that a maximum crop of extracted honey,
can be secured by the Dadant system with less manipulation
than with any other system yet made known. More bees maybe kept, more honey produced with the same hours of labor.
We have given our reasons for using this method. That is enough.
Let the reader decide for himself as to his course.